What do we know about Gilles Villeneuve?<\/p>\n
He\u2019s the first Canadian to win a Formula 1 race, which happened to be the 1978 Canadian Grand Prix in Montreal, and he\u2019d go on to win six Grand Prix races across six seasons before his tragic death in 1982. He is a member of the Canadian Motorsports Hall of Fame, Canada\u2019s Sports Hall of Fame, and is largely considered one of the most charismatic and iconic racers to have ever lived.<\/p>\n
But before all the fame and Ferraris, what defined Villeneuve as a young man and drove him to achieve such greatness is what Canadian director Yan Lanouette Turgeon sought to capture in his French-language biopic \u2018Villeneuve: The Rise of a Legend\u2019. The film made its premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival this past weekend.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt felt like that\u2019s what the interesting days were, how he got to be the driver he was, and his struggle to get there,\u201d Lanouette Turgeon told sportsnet.ca in Toronto. \u201cAnd it became this underdog story of him against money, and it made a lot of sense. Sometimes it\u2019s not being on top of the hill, it\u2019s how you get there.\u201d<\/p>\n
The film does indeed focus on Villeneuve\u2019s early life, from stealing his father\u2019s car in the middle of the night to race with friends, to taking up music as a trumpet-playing teenager initially obsessed with becoming the next Miles Davis. As we get to see in the film, Villeneuve chased greatness long before he ever lined up on the grid for the first time.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere was such a great connection between the music and the art of driving,\u201d continued the director, a Qu\u00e9b\u00e9cois himself. \u201cIt felt so connected for some reason, his passion for music and how he was yearning for something bigger even as a musician, and when he decided to go for racing, he had the same aspirations as the ones he had if had become a musician.\u201d<\/p>\n
Starring Qu\u00e9bec native R\u00e9mi Goulet as Villeneuve, the film then followed his jump to racing \u2014 first in a snowmobile, where he would win the 1974 World Championship Snowmobile Derby, and then later in Formula Atlantic, the stepping stone to Formula 1 itself. Villeneuve was so single-minded in pursuit of that ultimate goal that he sold his home without telling his wife Joann (played by Rosalie Bonenfant) to finance his race seat, and convinced sponsors in the Quebec business community to back him without ever having seen him race.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was all about capturing that charisma and the aura that he had around him,\u201d Goulet told sportsnet.ca in Toronto. \u201cHe had this thing that you can\u2019t explain.\u201d<\/p>\n
There\u2019s a lot of authenticity on display as well, as we get treated to real archival footage of Villeneuve in snowmobiles or on racetracks around Canada \u2014 \u201creal Gilles moments,\u201d as Lanouette Turgeon calls them. There\u2019s even a cameo that eagle-eyed F1 fans might spot. It\u2019s not a person, but a place: Circuit Gilles Villeneuve in Montreal makes multiple appearances throughout the film via a number of pit stop scenes during Villeneuve\u2019s early races in Formula Atlantic.<\/p>\n
One of the most lived-in pieces of his famed career found in this film appropriately comes in the form of two cars that the Gilles Villeneuve Museum in Berthierville, Qu\u00e9bec lent to the production. Keeping the cars in pristine shape was certainly a priority, but did Lanouette Turgeon or any of the cast and crew get a turn in the cockpit?<\/p>\n
\u201cYou bet I did,\u201d the director admitted with a laugh. \u201cI had a blast, really. At some point, our VFX crew who were shooting the races [\u2026], they called me and said, \u2018Do you want to drive one?\u2019 I said, \u2018You\u2019re damn right, I do!\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
With \u2018Villeneuve: Rise of a Legend\u2019 tabbed as the TIFF Closing Night Gala, the study of Villeneuve\u2019s early life will be unveiled further next month as Qu\u00e9bec audiences get a limited theatrical release. A wide release will hit theatres in 2027 \u2014 50 years after Villeneuve made his Formula 1 debut at the 1977 British Grand Prix.<\/p>\n
Not a bad time to be reacquainted with a Canadian sports legend.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"What do we know about Gilles Villeneuve? He\u2019s the first Canadian to win a Formula 1 race, which…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":904815,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[441],"tags":[49,48,578,576,577,82],"class_list":["post-904814","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-formula-1","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-f1","tag-formula-1","tag-formula1","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/904814","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=904814"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/904814\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/904815"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=904814"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=904814"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=904814"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}