Jean-Marc Vallée obituary
The Canadian film-maker Jean-Marc Vallee, who has died aged 58, apparently of a heart attack, handled serious subjects with bounce and briskness, earning prizes and respect in the process. His film Dallas Buyers Club (2013), starring Matthew McConaughey as a rodeo rider who illegally imports retroviral drugs for himself and his fellow Aids patients in the mid-1980s, was directed with great clarity. McConaughey and his co-star Jared Leto, who played an HIV-positive transgender woman, won Oscars. Moments in the film that might have been heightened or underlined - such as a sexual encounter that qualifies as carefree only because both participants have already contracted Aids, or a fantasy scene in a room full of butterflies - were instead folded nonchalantly into the mix.
It really comes down to the fact that I just don't want to show off in any way," he said. I love telling these stories that feel real, and authentic, so I try not to get too Hollywood' with it all when I am shooting. I just say, Let's get rid of this, go handheld, use natural light.'" The critic Anthony Lane called him a film-maker of considerable cunning, who takes predicaments that should by rights deflate the heart ... and turns them into nimble entertainments".
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