Xavier Dolan

(On TV, November 2020) Seeing J’ai tué ma mère after nearly every other film in the Xavier Dolan filmography, I have the impression that I’ve found the origin myth of his career. If you compare this directorial debut to his other movies (and you almost have to, considering the repetition of themes and stylistic affectations), it’s markedly weaker—it feels like a first draft of Mommy and everything that Dolan would revisit in his next half-dozen movies. It doesn’t stand up very well on its own now that Dolan has done better, and the rough production values only hint at what he went on to do with bigger budgets. But, of course, it should not be seen under such a harsh retrospective glare—Dolan was literally a teenager when he wrote and directed this semi-autobiographical story about a difficult mother/son relationship. He certainly doesn’t come across as likable here, but after a one-sided start, you also come to understand why he hates his mother so much. Beyond the themes, J’ai tué ma mère also shows the stylistic quirks that would also grace Dolan’s later films—pop music, montages, idiosyncratic directing, etc. But it doesn’t quite hold up as well now that Dolan has fulfilled the promises created by this first film—in literally every aspect, he has improved and done better in later movies. This makes J’ai tué ma mère best suited for a somewhat specific public, more eager to dig into Dolan’s filmography than appreciate the film at face value. Let’s just say that if you can recognize the landlord character as a split-second cameo from Dolan’s father (legendary singer and actor Manuel Tadros), then you’re ready to see it in its ideal context.

(On Cable TV, July 2020) Amazingly enough, there are still a few people out there that hold that genre fiction is “easier” than straight drama—that anything with crime, fantasy or extrapolation is somehow less respectable than strictly mimetic realism. That kind of attitude often leads to spectacular misfires when those creators finally deign to try their hands at those “lesser” forms of creation, as they clearly don’t understand what makes genres tick. Most of my go-to examples are from literature (and science-fiction literature at that), but I was reminded of those misfires in tackling Tom à la ferme, which feels a lot like a thriller in which the writer can’t be bothered to thrill. It’s a good thing that I’ve seen other better Xavier Dolan movies before this one, because it feels like an indulgent semi-parody. As a gay protagonist (check) goes back to rural Québec to meet his dead boyfriends’ mom (check) to the sounds of insistent pop music (check), we also meet the dead boyfriend’s brother, who’s also gay (check) and unusually violent (check). I don’t recall slow motion (not check), but there are enough sustained shots of the protagonist’s face against a variety of backgrounds that it actually makes more sense to learn that Dolan plays the protagonist and writes and directs himself. But my biggest issue with Tom à la ferme is that it builds the antagonist to fearsome levels but doesn’t actually go through any payoff—the characters run away, they find evidence that the bad person did a bad thing and the credits roll—if you want a damming illustration of the film’s lack of climax, try reading the Wikipedia plot summary cold: it’s accurate, intensely anticlimactic and it clearly illustrates the film’s inability to conclude. While the film does have its dramatically intense moments, they don’t really lead anywhere. There’s a genre bait-and-switch here, and I don’t like it. Fortunately, Dolan has done much better elsewhere.

(On Cable TV, July 2020) Expectations ran high about French-Canadian wunderkind Xavier Dolan’s English-language debut The Death & Life of John F. Donovan, especially considering the calibre of the Hollywood cast that joined the project. But it doesn’t take all that much time to realize that the whole thing is a misfire. Emotionally fake and yet self-satisfied with itself, it features characters doing either implausible things (such as having an eleven-year-old being pen pal with a troubled star actor) or being amazed at their own actions when they’re fairly standard stuff (i.e.: a journalist being seduced by a rather humdrum story). The film quickly undermines its own internal coherence, as it mixes a framing device with two other previous plotlines, except that the framing device can’t even be aware of much of the previous timelines—it’s a bit of a mess and it rings hollow the way that other similar pretentious movies as The Goldfinch also did. The Death & Life of John F. Donovan is slick all right—and you don’t have to look all that deeply to spot Dolan’s usual cinematographic tics or thematic obsessions. I’m always lenient toward movies that take a poke at celebrity and filmmaking, but even considering that, The Death & Life of John F. Donovan is a disappointment, taking itself far too seriously from the title onward.