La Presse
Saturday 1st February 1992
Roy Dupuis - a great role …. With Claude
For 3 million people he is Ovila. And he was again on Wednesday afternoon when a regular at the Plateau Mont-Royal pub interrupted him in the course of the interview with La Presse on his role in BAHWC in which he stars. "Your wife’s in the paper", he told him. And he was of course talking about Marina Orsini who played Emilie Bordeleau at his side in Les Filles de Caleb, who had come earlier that day to finish the dubbing into English in Toronto.
"I’m on holiday", he could now say, disembarking at Dorval, for Roy Dupuis has nothing on his agenda at the moment other than the promotion of his new film, and post-synchronisation of some episodes of Scoop. And who rightly "articule mal" (??) for many of the other million and a half people who are going to see him again this evening on television in this new role of journalist Michel Gagné. For by all accounts everyone sees him as a ‘pin-up’, and although everyone recognises what one might call an ‘image’, not everyone necessarily knows him as ‘a great actor’.
It’s true that for the majority of Québécois, he’s never been seen in the theatre, not in the role of Adrian in Un oiseau vivant dans la gueule at the Quat’Sous, nor that of Romeo in Roméo et Juliette at the TNM, nor that of Jay in Chien by Jean-Marc Dalpé at the Fred Barry Hall, or those of Luc in Muses orphelines by Michel-Marc Bouchard in the Théatre d’Aujourd’hui or Harold in Harold et Maude on an Acadien tour with la Compagnie de Viola Légère.
BAHWC, the film that Jean Beaudin has based on the play by René-Daniel Dubois which opens next Friday in 5 cinemas in Montreal and 10 others around the towns of the province, is the moment of truth for the 28 year old actor of the class of 86 of the National Theatre School, who this time plays the role of a young male prostitute.
When asked if it’s his best role, he replies, "Yes. Without hesitation. It demanded of me everything I am and everything I know. <<Something to the effect that up till now the most demanding was Jay in Le Chien>>
Beaudin’s film, (he also directed the television series Filles de Caleb) from the play by R-DD created for Lothaire Bluteau at the Quat’Sous in 1986, and reprised by Marc Béland at the Rideau-Vert in 88, tells the story of a Montreal prostitute called Yves, who kills a student of literature at Montreal University whom he picks up one night.
It’s the Claude of the title, who is seen briefly in the film played by Jean-François Pichette. But he’s not seen at all in the play, which like the film (to which has been added some flashbacks - "It’s like clips, very short", says Roy Dupuis) is centred round the last ninety minutes of police interrogation which lasts for 36 hours.
Jacques Godin is the inspector in the film who tries desperately to draw a confession from the young murderer who after giving himself up to the police and having told them where to find the body, obstinately refuses to say any more. Until he confesses that he killed him because he loved him, and that for him it was the only way to make this love last forever, because he suddenly knew that it could not survive in the real world.
Roy Dupuis had never seen the play nor read it when he was approached for the role. On finally reading it he found it "frightening - for the challenge, and for the level of awareness it could bring me. "
But he no longer fears challenges -"When I return to the theatre it will be in something dangerous" - or subject matter : "Homosexuality is perhaps still a little taboo - some see it as an illness, but for me a person doesn’t choose what he is, or the world in which he lives. Anyway, it’s up to the people to choose, for me it’s an open film, a little event seen through a microscope which in some way speaks about the whole planet. It’s a story of love, of the city. Of the big city, the mass of society. It’s also a story of death."
The character of Yves, in which some people would see only a psychopath, "is far from being that for me", he continues. "He is simply someone who goes further than the rest. To the end."
And if death is always present in this film it’s far from being a "whore who kills a client for 20 quid" as suggested by the police in the beginning. "Yves is someone who has never been loved, and who kills when he understands that he will never be able to love as much as he has loved Claude. It’s also a story of death because, in the end, if we were all homosexual, (if passion was the only goal), that would be the end of the human race."
Before the filming, Roy Dupuis went to see what went on on Mont-Royal at night - where his character went to hang out with the guys "whom he chose", after he had finished with his clients of the day. Guided by a friend who made videos on the subject, he toured the Gay Village, visited the bars, met real prostitutes, and even spent the night with a couple he met there…turning for once to his advantage the immense popularity of the character of Ovila which trails him, and which today makes him want to be far from the city where personally "it has become more difficult to get up to mischief". But for the need to prepare for BAHWC it was otherwise - the prostitutes whom he met "were proud to be with the star".
But why this investigation? For Roy Dupuis, he must "see the surroundings, know how they speak, what they do. It’s my way of working; I bathe in the atmosphere, store the feelings, the energy. I work spontaneously. I look to enter into the character. Into his body. To be him. I try not to make choices, not to limit my characters too much, not to provoke them. For me, it’s not necessary to ‘see the game’. But I don’t want to say that I will never change. At the National School I began working in the manner of the Comedia del Arte. And maybe one day I’ll want to do something else.
For the moment what I do is a little avant garde.
He said that this method has perhaps more impact with a text like that of R-DD "a script that has plenty of meat, but which also has a large non-verbal dimension, where the writing is infinite. There is not only one way to see Yves. There are many."
Whatever he is, he must also deliver the goods. << This is a complicated sentence. There’s a bit about the cinema which he finds "less cerebral than the theatre, where it’s deeper, where you rehearse for six weeks, where you no longer ask yourself the questions raised at the first night" Then it goes on "To learn to act with the lighting - the screen - it’s like a photo, it’s flat, you can express emotions with only angles, or shadows. To learn to act with cameras, the close-ups, the medium shots. To act with your appearance. Beaudin is strong on that. The way of dressing, of combing your hair …."
To learn … the word returns often to the mouth of him whom three million people admire << … something about>> ‘the wonderful world of theatre, like Arlette Cousture in the wonderful world of letters, and Roch Voisine in the wonderful world of showbusiness.’
He doesn’t look ‘sharp’. The boy who disembarked from the plane at Dorval is dressed more like a bum, without doubt, but the actor is still also at ease in the bars in his neighbourhood. And his grey-blue eyes are still those of a child. You can see in them the Abitibi of his childhood. Where he dreamed of "being Zorro" like the other children, but not to be an actor. "I was destined for the pure sciences" Where his great pleasure was "to make a cabin in the woods and to sleep there overnight."
His mother is a Thifeault, whose ancestry is related to the Pronovosts, but he does not come from a big family like that in Filles de Caleb. His English forename ‘Roy’ is taken from his Franco-Ontarien father, himself called ‘Roi’. He came to Montreal at the age of 13.
It was after seeing Molière by Ariane Mnouchkine in secondary five, that he replaced his physics course with one on French theatre, staged the Malade imaginaire, << I think something about his school leaving qualifications>> turned up at the auditions for the National Theatre School under a false name, with the application form of a friend who had changed his mind. Michèle Rossignol, the director, discovered the trick but, it seems, had the nose to spot the talent which shines today.
Has he any plans?
The follow-up to Filles de Caleb of course, but nothing is finalised at the moment. He is going to use the break of the next months to relaunch his old dream of taking Le Chien to the screen (his first leading role).
And of course meanwhile in the following weeks, his role of Yves in BAHWC is bowling everyone over, many film projects are being proposed. "But in Québec," as he says, "if one or two projects end up being produced, you can count yourself lucky."
This will perhaps leave him the time, above all, to stage, with his favourite director Brigitte Haentjenf of Chien and Un oiseau vivant dans la gueule, a play which Higelin offered him during his trip to Paris last April, when Marcel Béliveau pulled out to take the lead (?trap) in Surprise sur prise.
The Higelin play is called Theâtre! It takes place in a bar, like the Le Presse interview which he brings to an end having forgotten the time, all fired up in promoting "the biggest role of his life so far" - Yves!