There’s no reason to talk of Xavier Dolan as a young filmmaker any longer. Yes, he’s only 25, but he’s now five films into an already impressive career and Laurence Anyways is a film any director of forty years or more would be proud to call their crowning achievement. Now comes Mommy, a film that could easily be argued as his best, and there’s absolutely no telling how high his star will rise, though I fully expect his to be a career that’s wildly celebrated by all film aficionados 25 years from now.
Telling the story of widowed mother Diane “Die” Després (Anne Dorval) and her 15-year-old violent son, Steve (Antoine Olivier Pilon), Mommy delves into the bond of a mother and her child, the love that exists within that bond and how there’s virtually nothing in this world that can break it.
Diane, however, is struggling. Steve is more than a handful, he’s a fireball of uncontrollable rage with little to no rhyme or reason. He’s been prematurely discharged from a governmental care facility after starting a fire that ended up badly burning another boy and now Diane must care for him at home all while trying to hold down a steady job. Unwilling to give up hope, Diane ultimately finds comfort, aid and an unexpected friendship in her neighbor across the street, Kyla (Suzanne Clément), a neighbor with an ambiguous story of her own.
Like all of Dolan films, the narrative is only a piece of the overall final product. This can be said for most any film as we evaluate the score, cinematography, editing, etc. but when it comes to Dolan he has a unique cinematic language all his own. There are few filmmakers working today with such an outright control over mood and tone. Whether it’s his use of music, slow motion or the combination of the two along with other techniques, Dolan is working with tools others simply don’t own.
With Mommy, however, he does run the risk of being accused of being gimmicky when it comes to his decision to present 99.8% of the film in a boxy, 1:1 aspect ratio. I don’t think such an accusation would necessarily be a false one, but the 0.2% of the time he opens things up to a full widescreen picture are absolutely stunning. You can almost see it coming the first time it happens, but it doesn’t matter, you’re so wrapped up in the moment you can’t help but be elevated even higher as the emotional high of the moment becomes too big for the frame to contain.
Visual flourishes continue beyond just the framing as he tells the story through close-ups, blurred faces, whip pans, slow motion and slow zooms. His shooting style is anything but subtle, but it all works so well together as a whole you don’t tend to notice each and every thing he’s doing until it completely wows you.
As always, he uses music to great effect and from sources not entirely expected including Sarah McLachlan, Eiffel 65 and Counting Crows. From the outside, using songs such as “Building a Mystery” or “Colorblind” seems almost generic, but it’s your recognition of these films Dolan is counting on, drawing you in.
Beyond the superficial and directorial flourishes, it’s the performances that bring Mommy home.
Pilon deserves credit as the raging problem child he is, but it’s Dorval and Clement that simply shatter any and all performance expectations. Dorval previously played the mother to Dolan’s character in his breakout film I Killed My Mother and he has given her one hell of a meaty role here. Diane is a character that runs the gamut of emotions, doing all she can to hold herself together in the face of a child that more than once threatens to kill her and is liberal with the use of the word “bitch” among several other colorful descriptors. Under such circumstances it’s easy enough to feel for her, but Dorval manages to create a character you don’t pity as much as you’re cheering for her, hoping she and her son can come through the other side unscathed.
Clément also starred in I Killed My Mother, but her performance in Dolan’s Laurence Anyways is the one you have to see if you haven’t already. Here she is equally impressive, playing a character with a slight stutter and, as I mentioned, a story all her own, though it’s one Dolan keeps in the shadows, only alluding to it every now and then. This puts a lot of the heavy lifting on Clément’s shoulders as she must carry the burden of her character’s past, but not make it so obvious it becomes cliche and tiresome. Suffice to say, she pulls it off while also tapping into some inner fury of her own, specifically in an intense tête-à -tête with Pilon that would serve as her Oscar clip if the Academy were to grow the balls to nominate her.
I don’t expect Dolan’s films to be for everyone, largely because I think it’s his style that appeals to me more than anything. The stories themselves could be told by most any filmmaker, but Dolan proves it’s more than just the story being told, it’s how it’s told, though this isn’t to discount his screenplay.
While this is the fifth film Dolan has directed, it’s also the fifth film he’s written and you can sense a personal connection to all his films and Mommy is no different. This very well may be why he’s able to capture emotion without the dialogue lesser filmmakers so heavily rely on. He has no problem drowning out dialogue, shutting his characters up and allowing the images alone to tell the story. Mommy features a scene in which his three leads dance to Celine Dion, and it’s one of the best the film has to offer and one in which so much is conveyed merely through the freedom the character’s are expressing rather than the words they’d otherwise be saying.
Few things are more satisfying than when you’re anticipating an artist’s next piece of work and it lives up to your expectations and Mommy is just such a situation. It’s unfair how much I’ve come to expect from each of Dolan’s films, but it’s the price that comes with quality. He is delivering some of the absolute best movies out there right now and that is something that deserves to be celebrated.
