Gaz Bar Blues is a Québec film written and directed by Louis Bélanger which won the Special Grand Jury Prize at the Montreal Film Festival.
It begins dramatically with the owner of a gas station being held up at gunpoint. That incident is then left incomplete and we are introduced to the owner, "Boss" Brochu, and his family. Brochu is a middle-aged widower who is the manager of a shabby service station somewhere in Québec. He's developed Parkinson's and he needs the help of his three sons to continue in business, but the two older sons have no interest, while the youngest is willing but only 14.
The film is set in 1989. Self-service stations are forcing small and marginal service stations out of business, and this one has almost as many robbers as paying customers. It serves mainly as a hang-out for an assortment of oddballs, who gather every day to smoke, joke around, and pass the time. Think of several Cliff Clavens with a Québec accent. Brochu knows the writing is on the wall, but he knows nothing else but work, and seems to think that if he can keep the business going, he can keep his family together.
Rejean, however, wants to be a blues musician. He runs off to play his harmonica whenever he can, abandoning the more conventional son, Guy, to cover for him. But even Guy has had enough, and he leaves to photograph Berlin after the fall of the Wall.
Eventually, we return to the armed robbery, and see its dramatic denouement. Boss admits the inevitable, and closes the gas bar. He makes peace with Guy and Rejean, and with his illness.
This is an honest, moving, and charming film, clearly bearing the imprint of personal experience. The cast, led by popular Québec comedian Serge Thériault as the paterfamilias, is uniformly excellent. At 115 minutes, I would say it runs 10 minutes long. The Berlin episode should have been excised. Mostly, it serves as an excuse for Bélanger to self-indulgently display his own arty photographs, and to make a rather strained analogy between the East Berliners and people like Brochu who are economically obsolete.
The subtitles, of the very colloquial working class language of the characters, are generally excellent. However, my companion assured me that the dialogue identifies Boss as 59, whereas the subtitles say 54. Given that he looks about 65, it's a rather significant point.
