As everyone around these parts knows, I’m a big fan of 24-year-old writer/director/actor Xavier Dolan whose first three films — I Killed My Mother, Heartbeats and Laurence Anyways — are all excellent watches, the latter of which hits DVD and Blu-ray next Tuesday. Dolan’s latest film, Tom at the Farm, is a departure from all three however.
In my review out of Toronto I wrote, “Cinematically it feels unique in its own right and my first instinct is to call it some sort of B-movie thriller, though that too doesn’t feel right, just as a tonal comparison to something like Repulsion or Diabolique is similarly wrong. Tom at the Farm has a madness all its own.”
Dolan adapted the film from Michel Marc Bouchard‘s play of the same name, and he plays the title character, a young advertising copywriter who takes a trip out to the country to attend a funeral only to learn the mother (Lise Roy) of the deceased doesn’t know who he is or his relationship to her dead son, Guillame. Her other son, Francis (Pierre-Yves Cardinal), however, seems fully aware of who Tom is and sets about tormenting him, physically and mentally. From there the story takes a few twists and turns you won’t see coming.
I didn’t love Tom at the Farm, but I respected it and am certainly happy I saw it. I think, at this point, I would see anything Dolan put up on the screen. Right now the film is scheduled to hit French theaters in March and I expect Canadian cinemas shortly thereafter, but it has yet to be picked up by a domestic distributor. Perhaps after it plays the Festival Du Nouveau Cinema later this month.
Don’t let that stop you from checking out the trailer below and when you’re done, give my review a read right here. [via The Playlist]
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