UnCultured

Xavier Dolan's ‘Tom At The Farm’ Reviewed

Four out of the five movies written and directed by Xavier Dolan have been complete originals: noisy, brash, seriocomic relationship studies, born from the hyperactive brain of this prodigiously talented Québécois filmmaker. Tom At The Farm, which Dolan made before his recent Cannes prizewinner, Mommy, is the exception—an adaptation of a play by Michel Marc Bouchard (Lilies), who helped write the screenplay. Accordingly, it’s something of a departure for the 26-year-old festival darling; out of reverence for his text, Dolan has pulled back on the manic energy that characterizes his other features, emerging with something more measured and deliberate, a psychosexual chamber piece.

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Interview: Xavier Dolan on "Mommy"

As a more mature and intelligent continuation of themes explored in his debut feature I Killed My Mother, Dolan again presents a harrowing mother and son relationship with Mommy, starring newcomer Antoine-Olivier Pilon and the phenomenal Anne Dorval, (a frequent Dolan collaborator), as Steve and Diane aka Die. As an out-of-work, widowed, single mother, Die finds herself with full-time custody of 15-year-old Steve, whose ADHD makes him nothing short of a terror to live with.

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Xavier Dolan - Mommy 

If it merits no other superlative, Mommy is unquestionably the most hyperactive movie of the year. It begins at a fever pitch and maintains that degree of in-your-face intensity for well over two hours, to either exhilarating or exhausting effect, depending on one’s tolerance level. Imagine an entire film that takes its cue from Brad Pitt’s performance in 12 Monkeys. Such reckless energy could only come from a youngster, and, indeed, French-Canadian writer-director Xavier Dolan is just 25 years old, though this is already his fifth feature. 

Xavier Dolan

Get a Closer Look at Xavier Dolan’s ‘Mommy’

“As much as I like combining drama and humor—because life is about the duality of both in all its absurdity—for the same reason I like to write a story with very realistic environments interwoven with more extravagant parentheses and segments,” Xavier Dolan once told me. “It’s important for me to have these situations where things are bigger than nature, bigger than the characters themselves, where you feel overwhelmed by life and it makes us remember how small we are and life itself in the movie reminds the characters of that.” And although Tom at the Farm still doesn’t have US distribution, yesterday, Dolan’s latest feature Mommy premiered at Cannes.

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Xavier Dolan - Heartbeats

The Most Anticipated Films of the Spring and Summer 

For the past nine years, we've all been waiting to see if Jesse ever got on that plane and what became of him and Celine in Richard Linklater's 2004 intimate walking-and-talking romance Before Sunset, the follow-up to 1995's Before Sunrise. And now, eighteen years since that first moment in Vienna, we finally get to see where their story lands. Sony Pictures Classics have acquired Before Midnight, and to our delight it's been revealed that the film we've been waiting so long with baited breath to see will finally have a limited release run starting May 24th in New York and Los Angeles. But Linklater's decade-spanning drama isn't the only one getting an official date. Pedro Almodovar's follow-up to last year'sThe Skin I Live in, the vibrant comedy I'm So Excited, will hit New York and L.A. on June 28th. And to top it off, as Woody Allen's annual film will have a mid-summer's release. Midnight in Paris and To Rome with Love both premiered in early June but his latest, Blue Jasmine (starring Cate Blanchett, Alec baldwin, Peter Sarsgaard, and Louis CK), will roll out on July 26th for a limited release.

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