Xavier Dolan

At just 27 years old, Canadian filmmaker Xavier Dolan has an almost overwhelming set of accolades alongside his name. All six of his feature films have won major awards, including this one, which like several others tackles a dysfunctional family with style, humour and unflinching nastiness. This one also features a stellar cast at the top of their game, and a situation that's almost painfully easy to identify with.

It opens as Louis (Gaspard Ulliel) arrives at his rural family home for the first time in 12 years to tell his family that he's dying. But he finds it difficult to get the words out. His mother Martine (Nathalie Baye) is chirpy and excited, his older brother Antoine (Vincent Cassel) challenges everything everyone says, and their younger sister Suzanne (Lea Seydoux) is curious to learn more about this brother she never really knew. And then there's Antoine's eerily patient wife Catherine (Marion Cotillard), who quietly observes everything until she understands what Louis is struggling to tell everyone, long before he can say it out loud.

Yes, this is an exploration of how awkward it is to go home again, falling back into old patterns of behaviour that make it very difficult to be yourself and say what needs to be said. And also how hard it is to understand the experiences and lifestyle of people we were once very close to who have moved on. The film is based on a play by Jean-Luc Lagarce, which is apparent in its closed-in location and the series of pointed conversations. And Dolan opens this out cleverly, using visually stunning camerawork that continually isolates the characters' inner thoughts and feelings in contrast to their outer actions. In other words, it's immediately clear why Louis left these people behind.

Continue reading: It's Only The End Of The World Review

One of the most jaw-dropping movies in recent years, this blackly comical drama is the most audacious work yet from Canadian filmmaker Xavier Dolan. It's also the 25-year-old's fifth film, after I Killed My Mother, Heartbeats, Laurence Anyway, Tom at the Farm, all of which have won various awards (including Mommy, which received the 2014 Cannes Jury Prize). But even for the ambitious Dolan, this is seriously full-on, an adrenaline rush of a movie that leaves us feeling fully alive.

The film opens as toughened survivor Diana (Anne Dorval) agrees to let her 15-year-old tearaway son Steve (Antoine-Olivier Pilon) move back home after a stint in mental-institute lockdown. He may be violent and uncontrollably hyperactive, but she can't bear to see him transferred to an adult facility. On arriving home, this strong-willed mother and son immediately lock horns. And Diana isn't sure how to cope, although she gets some assistance from two neighbours: Paul (Patrick Huard) is clearly in love with Diana and offers to help her sort out Steve's legal problems, while the darkly troubled Kyla (Suzanne Clement) has a surprising calming effect on Steve. Together, these four people are a very fragile makeshift family.

With his script and direction, Dolan ramps up the intensity right from the start, allowing the characters to scream violently at each other in ways that cleverly display their underlying affection. It's an uncanny trick that's augmented by artfully brilliant cinematography that starts out in a square box then broadens out across the screen to reflect the mor ehopeful mood shifts. Dolan also deploys music in a fiercely inventive way that underlines the emotional resonance (although there's a strange gap where a proper song feels like it's missing from the final-act montage). Every scene is so finely constructed that the emotions explode from the screen, forcing the audience to brace itself for whatever comes next.

Continue reading: Mommy Review

After black comedy (I Killed My Mother), ethereal romance (Heartbeats) and gender-bending drama (Laurence Anyways), eerily gifted 25-year-old Canadian filmmaker Xavier Dolan turns to Hitchcock for inspiration. The result is a seriously creepy thriller that's packed with pungent themes and spiky characters. It's the kind of film that makes us laugh one minute then chills us to the bone the next.

Dolan stars as Tom, a loner who drives from his home in Montreal to the countryside to attend the funeral of his boyfriend. Arriving on the family's farm, Tom discovers that his boyfriend had never come out to his mother Agathe (Lise Roy), and older son Francis (Pierre-Yves Cardinal) threatens Tom to keep him quiet. So when Agathe asks about her son's girlfriend, Tom calls his friend Sara (Evelyne Brochu) and asks her to come. Meanwhile, Tom finds himself caught in a web of erotic attraction and dark fear as the mercurial Francis bullies him mercilessly, putting him to work on the farm.

With its North by Northwest setting and intense filmmaking style, Dolan continually drops hints that surprise us as the story twists and turns. Nothing feels safe in this beautiful place, as the cornfields have frighteningly sharp leaves and the barns aren't as deserted as they seem to be. The slight Dolan and beefy Cardinal make a striking on-screen pair, and both actors let us see under the surface in unexpected ways. Like Tom, we are both drawn to and terrified of Francis. And the two women in the mix add to the shifting dynamic.

Continue reading: Tom At The Farm Review

After I Killed My Mother and Heartbeats, 23-year-old filmmaker Dolan gets even more ambitious with this epic-length romantic drama. Not all of his flourishes work, and the film is far too long, but there are moments of artistic genius all the way through that make it worth seeing. It's also anchored by two terrific central performances that work their way under our skin.

At the centre is the free-spirited relationship between Laurence (Poupaud) and his long-time girlfriend Fred (Clement). But Fred is caught completely off-guard when Laurence tells her that he has always felt like he was a man in a woman's body, and now he wants to start the transition to become female. She initially rejects him, but realises that she still loves him, regardless of his gender. His mother (Baye) takes longer to come round. And for Laurence the treatment from his colleagues and society at large is even more difficult to cope with, as he's the brunt of rampant bigotry. Over the course of a decade, his relationship with Fred is stretched to the breaking point, and after a few years apart they meet up again to see if they still belong together.

Poupaud and Clement deliver startlingly naturalistic performances as Laurence and Fred, letting us see into their souls as they face secrets, betrayals, outside pressure and the continual feeling that they belong together. Intriguingly, all of this unfurls in a way that's completely organic, as Dolan grounds everything in real human emotions. In fact, the only complaint is that the film feels artistically indulgent, and could have used a stronger editor to shape the story into a leaner, less rambling narrative.

Continue reading: Laurence Anyways Review