C.R.A.Z.Y. Watch a scene from Jean-Marc Vallée's coming-of-age drama.

It's taken ten years of sweat and presumably lots of swearing for French-Canadian director Jean-Marc Vallée to realise his vision of C.R.A.Z.Y. The fact that the story revolves around a gay teenager didn't help when it came to securing funding. "People were saying, 'Well, we've seen that film about the gay kid coming out before,' and I was like, 'Did you read the f****** script!? It's not a film about a gay, it's about a f****** father-son relationship!" If Vallée appears to take things personally, it's because he considers the story autobiographical. He's not gay but, like he says, that's not the point.

The conflicts brought about by central character Zach's sexuality are based on the life of co-writer Francois Boulay, but Vallée is quick to add that "everything that is faith and spirituality and music is from my world". He sums it up as "a musical film", and indeed the film's soundtrack - which manages to combine Patsy Cline's Crazy with The Rolling Stones' Sympathy For The Devil and David Bowie's Space Oddity - was something that Vallée refused to compromise on, despite his low budget. "The thing that worried financiers most was that it was a very ambitious film," he says. "It was the length of the script, lots of visual effects, the magic and mystical quality, and the music - which was essential for me to define the characters. As a matter of fact, the music cost an arm and a leg."

The film is the soundtrack and the soundtrack is the film.

After much haggling, Vallée took drastic measures to acquire the rights to 25 songs in all. "I had to cut my director's fee and the producers' fees to have enough money to pay for that. It's very painful to clear the rights of songs, but I knew that this was the film. The film is the soundtrack and the soundtrack is the film. It's vital to the tone and the feelings of the characters… It was my way of putting my signature on it too."

Of course, making a feature with music that could resonate with moviegoers across the US and Europe might help to transcend the language barrier and perhaps improve the film's appeal in those markets. "I didn't include the music for that reason," insists Vallée. "I feel like this music belongs to Quebec, to French Canada – the British rock belongs to me! They are my souvenirs. In Quebec we grew up with three different pop cultures - from the UK, the States, and France - and we added them to our own French Canadian culture. The film reflects all of that."

Sadly a few of the artists he approached didn't feel the same way. "I feel like those songs are mine so I was f****** pissed when bands were saying 'no' when we were trying to clear the rights. Those f****** bands! Radiohead and Joy Division and Neil Young! They all said no. They don't have the right to say no! I have resentments. I mean, I'm still very pissed about it."

Where music wasn't available, Vallée turned to visual effects to enhance the sense of magic and whimsy. With just a small CGI budget, he was forced to be resourceful and the results are more perhaps more striking because of it. "There are many effects that people don't notice; a reflection of the city on a window is a matte painting because that's what we could afford. Some are more surreal, like a shot that goes through a window, over the city and into the desert. It was originally a 25-second shot but we cut it down because it looked too fast, like a video game, but we couldn't afford to render the effect because it had already taken three months to render that shot..."

Vallée goes on to dwell on some minor faults, but in the end he's proud of a film that belies its £4m budget. "I would've liked to have shot some scenes differently," he says, "but cinema is an art of compromise and I think the whole is bigger than the sum of its elements. People are going to see it and be grabbing the whole.”

C.R.A.Z.Y. is now out to buy on DVD.

Stella Papamichael | Updated 21 Aug 06

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