Stéphane Rousseau makes restraint count in a film full of talkers. His Sébastien in The Barbarian Invasions is a persuasive reason to seek out his dramatic work, though the surrounding conversation can grow smug.
Fi1m perspective
Rémy Girard's professor keeps making himself the most important person present in The Barbarian Invasions (2003). As his son, Sébastien, Stéphane Rousseau gives him resistance, and the father-son scenes are better for it. He does not have to compete with Girard's appetite for conversation to establish that there is another person here whose feelings count. It is a persuasive dramatic performance in a film that sometimes enjoys its own talk too much.
The route to that part ran through stand-up and one-man shows, then a film debut in the Québec comedy Les Dangereux (2002). Denys Arcand's film made the dramatic turn clear a year later. Rousseau's stage work uses physical comedy, multiple characters and music; Sébastien calls for emotional restraint. The connection is timing, though Arcand gives him a different task: to keep the son's point of view present while the father talks.
We were moved by Rousseau and Girard's attempts to reach each other, because the affection has to survive the father's self-importance. The son has reasons to resist him, yet Rousseau allows the affection to matter as well. Arcand gets something valuable from putting this restrained performance beside Girard's more expansive one. That does not cure the smugness of some of the conversation or the blunt social criticism, but it gives us a reason to stay with the people having it.
The subsequent comedy work includes Asterix at the Olympic Games (2008) and Michaël Youn's music-industry parody Fatal (2010), in which Rousseau plays Chris Prolls. His comic timing and physicality suit ensemble work. The risk is being left with too little to do, as in Asterix at the Olympic Games. We would start with Arcand, where there is a clear reason for him to be in the scene even when somebody else has most of the words.
Biography
Stéphane Rousseau is a Canadian actor and comedian. Born on 17 September 1966 in LaSalle, Québec, he began performing stand-up comedy at the age of 13 and later worked in radio and at the Juste pour rire festival in Montréal.
He is best known for his role as Sébastien in the 2003 film The Barbarian Invasions, for which he received the Genie Award for Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role. Other film credits include Alafolix in Asterix at the Olympic Games (2008), Chris Prolls in Fatal (2010) and Lucas in Wedding Unplanned (2017, also known as Paris or Perish). He has also appeared in numerous television series.
