By Jake Howell jake.howell@utoronto.ca

Countdown To Cannes: Xavier Dolan

The fourth in a series of snapshots outlining the nineteen directors in the 67th Palme d’Or Competition.

MOMMYBackground: Canadian; born Montreal, Québec, Canada 1989.

Known for / style: I Killed My Mother (2009), Heartbeats (Les amours imaginaires) (2010), Laurence Anyways (2012), Tom at the Farm (Tom à la ferme) (2013); flamboyant, colorful, or otherwise florid images; writing his own films as well as acting in them; youthful explorations of love and the many facets of sexuality (including a multitude of LGBTQ themes); working in the romance and thriller genres.

Notable accolades: At only age 25, Canada’s wunderkind filmmaker has already harvested   a staggering amount of trophies from the international festival circuit. At Cannes, he’s picked up the Queer Palm (Laurence Anyways) and two “Regards Jeune” prizes (I Killed My Mother and Heartbeats). Dolan is a three-time Lumiere Award winner, a Venice FIPRESCI prize-winner (Tom at the Farm), and the owner of the TIFF 2012 Best Canadian Feature Film award (Laurence Anyways).

Film he’s bringing to Cannes: Mommy, a French-language film that stars Anne Dorval (I Killed My Mother), Suzanne Clement (Laurence Anyways), Antoine-Olivier Pilon (Xavier Dolan’s short College Boy: Indochine), Alexandre Goyette (Laurence Anyways), and Patrick Huard (Starbuck). From the IMDb listing: “A widowed single mother, raising her violent son alone, finds new hope when a mysterious neighbor inserts herself into their household.”

Previous Cannes appearances: Tom at the Farm is the only film that Dolan has not premiered at Cannes (it ventured to Venice instead). I Killed My Mother played the 2009 Director’s Fortnight program, with Heartbeats and Laurence Anyways later bowing in Un Certain Regard. Mommy is Dolan’s first Competition entry.

MOMMY2Could it win the Palme? When he was first making a name for himself, there was a period where Dolan was almost critically untouchable. His age, his directorial maturity, his themes—films like I Killed My Mother and Heartbeats were hard to ignore and obviously uniquely talented. He’s since found some critics to be less forgiving toward a filmmaker his age (more than a few reviews found 2012’s nearly three-hour sit Laurence Anyways to be “self-indulgent”), and because Dolan’s essentially making a feature every year, there’s not as much at stake if the jury’s not sweet on Mommy.  That being said, and while the novelty of his youth may have worn off, Dolan’s eye is consistently getting stronger: Tom at the Farm, for example, was listed as one of TIFF’s top ten Canadian films of 2013, and is commonly referred to as “Hitchcockian.” Artistically (and knowing what a stereotypical Palme d’Or film looks or feels like), Mommy is possibly Canada’s best shot at gold: his cast is strong and his themes are proven successful (if the titles are any indication, seeing I Killed My Mother prior to this film would be relevant).

Why you should care: Details surrounding this film are relatively scarce, and there isn’t yet a trailer to preview. But take a peek at the filmography of the entire cast and you’ll see that the Mommy collective are all alumni of Dolan’s films, which is both reassuring and exciting at the same time. If you’re unfamiliar with the staggering industry that is Québecois cinema, the work of Xavier Dolan is certainly an excellent contemporary starting point. Mommy, especially, features some of the best actors working in the province today, and they’re all rejoining Dolan for another go.

Xavier Dolan talks career with Strombo.

Follow Jake Howell on Twitter:  @Jake_Howell

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It shows how out of it I was in trying to be in it, acknowledging that I was out of it to myself, and then thinking, “Okay, how do I stop being out of it? Well, I get some legitimate illogical narrative ideas” — some novel, you know?

So I decided on three writers that I might be able to option their material and get some producer, or myself as producer, and then get some writer to do a screenplay on it, and maybe make a movie.

And so the three projects were “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep,” “Naked Lunch” and a collection of Bukowski. Which, in 1975, forget it — I mean, that was nuts. Hollywood would not touch any of that, but I was looking for something commercial, and I thought that all of these things were coming.

There would be no Blade Runner if there was no Ray Bradbury. I couldn’t find Philip K. Dick. His agent didn’t even know where he was. And so I gave up.

I was walking down the street and I ran into Bradbury — he directed a play that I was going to do as an actor, so we know each other, but he yelled “hi” — and I’d forgot who he was.

So at my girlfriend Barbara Hershey’s urging — I was with her at that moment — she said, “Talk to him! That guy really wants to talk to you,” and I said “No, fuck him,” and keep walking.

But then I did, and then I realized who it was, and I thought, “Wait, he’s in that realm, maybe he knows Philip K. Dick.” I said, “You know a guy named—” “Yeah, sure — you want his phone number?”

My friend paid my rent for a year while I wrote, because it turned out we couldn’t get a writer. My friends kept on me about, well, if you can’t get a writer, then you write.”
~ Hampton Fancher

“That was the most disappointing thing to me in how this thing was played. Is that I’m on the phone with you now, after all that’s been said, and the fundamental distinction between what James is dealing with in these other cases is not actually brought to the fore. The fundamental difference is that James Franco didn’t seek to use his position to have sex with anyone. There’s not a case of that. He wasn’t using his position or status to try to solicit a sexual favor from anyone. If he had — if that were what the accusation involved — the show would not have gone on. We would have folded up shop and we would have not completed the show. Because then it would have been the same as Harvey Weinstein, or Les Moonves, or any of these cases that are fundamental to this new paradigm. Did you not notice that? Why did you not notice that? Is that not something notable to say, journalistically? Because nobody could find the voice to say it. I’m not just being rhetorical. Why is it that you and the other critics, none of you could find the voice to say, “You know, it’s not this, it’s that”? Because — let me go on and speak further to this. If you go back to the L.A. Times piece, that’s what it lacked. That’s what they were not able to deliver. The one example in the five that involved an issue of a sexual act was between James and a woman he was dating, who he was not working with. There was no professional dynamic in any capacity.

~ David Simon