Xavier Dolan Is The 26-Year-Old Filmmaking Prodigy Who’s About To Make You Feel Mighty Inferior
He also looks like Justin Bieber, kind of?
It’s impossible to look at the career of Xavier Dolan and not be both impressed and a little dismayed. Here I am, nearly 30 years old and feeling generally quite chuffed whenever I can crawl out of bed before midday, before a glance at Dolan’s career accomplishments makes me feel exhausted. You don’t get described as a “wunderkind” by being lazy, you know. Not only is the 26-year-old Québécois filmmaker ridiculously attractive with his model looks, hipster rimmed glasses and sexy-messy fop of hair, but he’s already made five critically acclaimed films and won countless awards including six – SIX! – at the Cannes Film Festival.
He’s been labelled a “control freak,” “insufferable” and “a brat,” and even “prickly and smirkily smarmy… French-Canadian art cinema’s answer to Justin Bieber,” but even when he’s not writing, directing, producing, acting, editing and even designing the costumes for his own films, he’s starring in Elephant Song (2015) alongside Catherine Keener, voicing the French-dubbed roles of Stan in South Park and Jacob in The Twilight Saga, and being recruited by Voldemort. What did you do today?
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Mommy’s Boy
At last year’s Cannes Film Festival, Dolan’s latest film tied for the Jury Prize with legendary 84-year-old French filmmaker Jean-Luc Godard’s 3D art-assault Goodbye to Language (2014). Two stylistically polarizing filmmakers from separate generations sharing the prestigious award was quite a turn of events, and when accepting his award on stage Dolan turned to jury president Jane Campion and thanked her for The Piano (1993). Citing it as the first film he ever watched and one that “defined who I am and what I love. Your Piano made me want to write roles for women, beautiful women with soul and will and strength.”
That inspiration is certainly seen in Mommy (2014), his most accessible and widely-seen film yet. It is a searing, propulsive melodrama about a teenage outcast boy and his mother whose love for her son is matched only by her tried patience with his flamboyant mood swings and tempestuous, violent behavior. Returning home from a centre for troubled youth, their stormy relationship is given a temporary reprieve thanks to the arrival of a nervous, stuttering neighbor, and the three form the unlikeliest of friendships bound by their love of Celine Dion.
Recalling Andrea Arnold’s similarly angst-ridden teen drama Fish Tank (2009), Mommy blazes across the screen thanks to Dolan’s impeccable taste in pop music soundtracks and visual compositions. He is a director who can get as much narrative oomph out of Lana Del Rey’s “Born to Die” or Oasis’ “Wonderwall” as Martin Scorsese can out of the Rolling Stones. Visually, Dolan has taken the unusual step of filming the majority of the two-and-a-half-hour movie in a boxy format that immediately suggests the sun-tinted filters of Instagram. It may look initially jarring and frequently plays tricks on the eye, but it becomes remarkably effective as a modern-eyed view of this altogether startling and unique teenage world.
Mommy isn’t the first time Dolan has dealt with issues of the matriarch. Far less operatic than his latest venture but no less tumultuous, Dolan’s first film at just 19 years of age (he had written it at 16) was the electric I Killed My Mother (2009).
Superficially similar to Mommy – they’re both about a mother-and-son relationship – his debut was nevertheless a wildly different beast that made the Canadian director one to watch. Labelled “ferociously raw” by The Globe and Mail and “bluntly audacious” by The New York Times, it’s Dolan’s most immature film, but that unapologetic youthful ‘tude is exactly what makes the complicated battle of wits at its centre so powerful.
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Gay, But Not Queer
Despite his insistence on not being labelled a queer filmmaker, it’s pretty hard not to do so when all of his films deal so blatantly with sexuality, gender, and identity. Especially when they’re so angrily hostile and heavily stylized like the films of the ‘80s and ‘90s queer cinema explosion from icons such as Gregg Araki and Pedro Almodóvar.
His second feature, the lightweight yet keenly observed Heartbeats (2010), follows the ridiculously fashionable love triangle between a straight woman, a gay man, and the Adonis they’re both attracted to. If it weren’t for Dolan’s ability to laser in on a youthful experience as well as his way with mimicking stylistic tricks from other filmmakers – in this case adopting the flourishing romanticism of legendary Hong Kong director Wong Kar-wai – and yet somehow make them fresh and all his own, then it would be easy to dismiss it. As it is, it’s a far more memorable film than any number of less-adventurous (predominantly American indie) takes on similar material.
His first out-and-out masterpiece followed with Laurence Anyways (2012). This three-hour epic is full of high-wire emotions, rarely-glimpsed insights into the life of a transgender women and her partner, and extravagant visual set-pieces like this one, set to Visage’s iconic “Fade to Grey”.
Laurence Anyways – which Junkee hosted a special screening of last February – was a definite statement piece. Full of ambition and pizzazz quite unlike anything that had come before, it was Dolan’s first true step towards iconic status. Only a year later, he followed that impressive feat with Tom at the Farm (2013), a Hitchcockian thriller dealing with grief and repressed sexuality amidst the homophobic Canadian countryside.
It’s a remarkably effective, edge-of-your-seat experience that nonetheless continued the young director’s commitment to putting complex female and gay characters on screen with remarkable frequency.
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Xavier Goes to Hollywood
Dolan’s next film will be his English-language debut, and he’s already signed on some very big names. Jessica Chastain, Kathy Bates, Susan Sarandon, and Game of Thrones’ Kit Harrington have all signed on to The Death and Life of John F Donovan about a gossip columnist and a Hollywood actor. Hopefully it becomes more Sense and Sensibility (1995) or Snowpiercer (2014) than The Tourist (2010) or The Invasion (2007) when it comes to acclaimed international directors jumping ship to America.
For the time being, Mommy is finally making its way to Australian cinemas and it shouldn’t be missed. It’s bold and creative and unlike anything else you’re likely to see all year. And if that’s not enough, here’s Dolan looking like a babe. You’re welcome.
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Mommy is out 9 April through Sharmill Films.
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Glenn Dunks is a freelance writer from Melbourne. He also works as an editor and a film festival programmer while tweeting too much@glenndunks.