Julien Poulin, beyond Elvis Gratton

Elvis Gratton, blessing or curse for an actor of the caliber of Julien Poulin, whom Quebec mourns today? Certainly both, because despite an impressive career – he has played in dozens of films and TV series – it is obviously this cult character who left his mark.

Him, like the collective Quebec imagination.

A role that Julien Poulin never denied, since he agreed to play it several times, but which he often had to drag like a ball and chain, he admitted.

Let’s not forget that Elvis Gratton, aka Bob Gratton, is a bit like the Frankenstein of Julien Poulin and filmmaker Pierre Falardeau, who worked with two heads and four hands in their early days, which notably resulted in the documentary And Soup the pamphlet Speak White. In the short film Speak White In 1980, the famous poem by Michèle Lalonde was read by Marie Eykel, known throughout the province as Passe-Partout, and who was Julien Poulin’s partner for more than 20 years.

Poulin, like Falardeau, was then on the script, sound and production of this combat cinema that they made with the means at hand, in the passion of their youth. But it was still he who had to carry the weight of the incarnation of Elvis Gratton. This indestructible monster who continues his life on social networks with lines engraved in memories.

The Gratton creature was a response to the 1980 referendum, experienced as a lamentable failure by these two fierce and militant sovereignists, which crystallized everything they wanted to see disappear: the mentality of the colonized, capitalist alienation, the obsession with American culture, among others. The first time I saw Elvis Gratton: The King of Kingsas a teenager, I hated it. I didn’t find it funny at all to recognize people from my background in this grating image. I received this film at face value, but it woke me up on certain things.

By a strange irony of history, the creature escaped Poulin and Falardeau, when Elvis Gratton became the most emblematic character of Quebec, who was asking for more. And I think it’s largely because of Julien Poulin. As if, behind this character who should have been hated, we nevertheless guessed the vulnerability of his generous interpreter, who we could not help but love a little. Julien Poulin gives so much of himself in this role which could have killed his career! We don’t know many actors who would have agreed to play such an idiot with such abandon, at the risk of tarnishing their image forever.

It was so striking that for a few years, I had trouble seeing anything other than Gratton in Julien Poulin. Until the movie The Party (1990), again with Falardeau. Julien Poulin as an inmate desperate to the point of suicide could not be more opposite to the burlesque of his Elvis, and this is where we could see the extent of his range. The tragedy was, it seems, closer to the nature of this hypersensitive man, steeped in doubts, humble and shy, whom we have not often seen on talk shows, in fact. “He was someone who was very funny and, at the same time, as is often the case with clowns, someone who did not find happiness easy,” Marie Eykel told RDI in an interview.

How to forget the role of Gaétan in the series Midnight, eveningwhich earned him a Gémeaux in 2007, or that of Germain in the film Truckfor which he won a Jutra prize in 2013? Or recently by Father Laloge in The countries abovejust like Yvon in Leo ?

Despite the shadow of Elvis Gratton, Julien Poulin made his place in this profession, where he had everyone’s esteem, not only for his talent, but also for his human qualities.

In his interviews, we felt him on edge, particularly in the one he gave to the Éléphant platform, where he talks about his great friend Falardeau, from whom he had distanced himself before his death in 2009.

Watch Julien Poulin’s interview on the Éléphant platform

We understand in this interview that Falardeau’s intransigence probably damaged their friendship. “Its contradictions,” underlines Poulin, fighting back tears. I have the impression that in this duo, Falardeau was the intellectual, and Poulin, the artist. His eyes were also moist when he spoke of this unfinished dream of a country for Quebec, which he was unable to see during his lifetime, like his friend. I hope that, somewhere, these two find each other and comfort each other.

The King is no more, long live Julien Poulin.