Drive-In

It’s Saturday night and we want to go to the movies. We had a flat car battery this morning so we didn’t go for a hike like we’d planned. I charged the battery but it still didn’t work so I went on my bike to a shop near the highway that was still open on Saturday evening to buy a new battery. It fitted just in my bike basket. I put it in and the car came to life again. So now, with our regained mobility, we decide to go to a drive-in cinema. I wanted to go for a long time but the movies they show there are usually dubbed-in-French Hollywood productions. And I don’t like that. But now there was a Quebecois movie playing: C.R.A.Z.Y., about the coming of age of a boy (Zac) amid his 4 brothers (Christian, Raymond, Antoine, Yvan) and the reviews were quite positive.

So we drove, a bit late because a friend called when we were ready to leave, to the South Shore (the other side of the St Lawrence River) to Boucherville. We weren’t the only ones so we waited half-an-hour in a traffic jam, just in the middle of nowhere, in a grassy field.

After we paid for our tickets from our car window, we found a free place not too far in front of the screen and waited for the movie to start. That took a while because we certainly weren’t the last people that showed up. The sound was aired over a FM frequency so we tuned our car stereo and waited while looking around.

This was my first ever drive-in cinema experience and Alison’s second (she was 6 when she went the first time). The crowd was quite mixed, from young, testosterone emitting boys (and their girlfriends, to people that were probably already retired. A lot of dope was smoked, and people were probably drinking too. Hopefully they weren’t the drivers…

Finally the movie started. It was quite entertaining although, as usual seeing Quebecois movies, I missed a lot of the text. Quebecois is such a strong accent and they use so many slang words I’ve absolutely no idea what they mean…

The movie was a bit long, and had too many dark scenes that didn’t fare well with the limited darkness outside and the limited brightness of the projection lamp, but it was a nice experience after all. We didn’t stay for the double bill though, the French language version of ‘The Interpreter’ with Nicole Kidman and Sean Penn speaking French.

We made our way outside without any accidents, so people weren’t that drunk or stoned yet. Or we where just lucky.