In In the moonlight by André Forcier (1983), one of my favorite Quebec films, Michel Côté played the albino Frank, a sort of angel fallen from the sky with hair no doubt woven from the very threads of the clouds. And in this comic duet of the white clown and the Auguste, his friendship with Burt, a former bowling champion (Guy L’Écuyer) crippled with arthritis, a sandwich man for the Moonshine Bowling advertisement, led us into winter poetry . This fantastic tale with a Ducharmian flavor, full of neon lights, dragons, violence, dead ends, snowflakes and dreams forged a Montreal mythology. Their fabulous tandem lived in an old Chevrolet. In a moment of crazy humor, the two zozos, completely drunk, were singing at the top of their voices: “Temperance, temperance, virtue of French Canadians”. Real scene of anthology.
The actors had frozen all over and Michel Côté only mentioned the winter filming with a shiver, but with a light in the back of his eyes, because he was proud of that role. I have long regretted that he did not, with a few exceptions, of which CRAZY of course, he more often dug the vein of the auteur film, he who could jump from one register to another.
He loved making people laugh so much. Especially in the theater brew, where the comic energy crossed the stage in the great communion of the public and the three singer-songwriters. On screen too, amusing, intriguing or worrying as an inspector, making the large audience shiver as a cop dad or as commanding Piché at the crossroads was his drug. He had humble origins and remembered it. But her natural class pierced through her roles. His deep sensitivity too. We felt his flaw, this fragile thing that made everyone crack, on the boards, on the screen, in life. A melancholy under the smile.
I tell myself that the interpreter of Frank, who had promised his companion toIn the moonlight to take her one day to Albinia, may have flown away into her pale world. Because this fictitious country was death opening its arms to the two fellows soon frozen. His character as a whitened young thirty-something, with a trace of innocence in the depths of his eyes, would he be back in dreamland? We write a lot of scenarios when people disappear.
At the Monument-National, Thursday, relatives, admirers and friends will say a last farewell to Michel Côté. The comedian of The little life was an integral part of the great Quebec family. Very close to the general public, hence this shower of emotional tributes since the announcement of his death. As if time had stopped after the fall of its curtain. I will have followed the rise of collective emotions from France, grafting my own, with memories glued to it.
And how can we forget this 2005 Marrakech Festival where CRAZY by Jean-Marc Vallée was presented with Arabic subtitles (including coronations) in front of a Moroccan audience, generally Muslim, far from the crucifixes of this pure Montreal family of the 1960s? He was so nervous, Michel Côté, before the screening, worried at the idea that the difference in the religious codes of the two societies, in the face of homosexuality too, one of the themes of the film, would lead to flop. I had given him a charm bought in the souks, which he held in his hand while the images scrolled by, under the icy silence of the room. Not a murmur, not a laugh even in front of the proven gags. Then suddenly, in the credits, this rain of applause out of nowhere. A triumph! Wow ! He was showing me his saving charm, ah! ah!, before singing to us later: “Take me to the end of the earth”, and this delirious evening will remain in the annals as a magical moment. For his role as an endearing, homophobic and protective father in CRAZY, the actor told me he had the impression — with good reason — of having taken over new areas of himself. Some incarnations appeal to both the media and the public. Others less.
I remember his grief in 2008 at our negative reviews upon the release of Cruising Bar 2, where he still held the four male roles. Because the formula, a real commercial success in 1989, but flayed by the media, had aged in its caricature. He had co-directed the film this time with Robert Ménard, had been involved in the script. The public remained faithful to him, but he was saddened to see that in comedy, a register more difficult to concoct than drama, the divorce between the press and the large audience is so shattering. Michel Côté will have had the career he wanted by first targeting Quebecers with emotion, suspense and laughter. If he realized how much his departure capsized them, his heart would warm up there in his cold Albinia.