Mommy
July 23rd, 2015

Courtesy of Roadside Attractions:

A passionate widowed single mom (Anne Dorval) finds herself burdened with the full-time custody of her unpredictable 15-year-old ADHD son (Antoine Olivier Pilon). As they struggle to make ends meet, Kyla (Suzanne Clément), the peculiar new neighbor across the street, offers her help. Together, they strive for a new sense of balance.

Tidbits:

• Cannes Film Festival – 2014 – Winner: Jury Prize
• Independent Spirit Awards – 2015 – Nominee: Best International Film
• Indiewire Critics’ Poll – 2014 – Nominee: Best Lead Actress
• César Awards – 2015 – Winner: Best Foreign Film
• Toronto Film Critics Association Awards – 2014 – Nominee: Rogers Award – Best Canadian Film

“Being on set as a kid and hearing about sex stories and hearing people swear… it’s a very specific atmosphere.”

Since my first film, I’ve talked a lot about love.

I’ve talked about teenage hood, sequestration and transsexualism. I’ve talked about Jackson Pollock and the 90s, about alienation and homophobia. Boarding schools and the very French-Canadian word “special”, milking the cows, Stendhal’s crystallization and the Stockholm syndrome. I’ve talked some pretty salty slang and I’ve talked dirty too. I’ve talked in English, every once in a while, and I’ve talked through my hat one too many times.

Cause that’s the thing when you “talk” about things, I guess, is that there is always this almost unavoidable risk of talking shit. Which is why I always decided to stick to what I knew, or what was -more or less – close to my skin. Subjects I thought I thoroughly or sufficiently knew because I knew my own difference or the suburb I was brought up in. Or because I knew how vast my fear of others was, and still is. Because I knew the lies we tell ourselves when we live in secret, or the useless love we stubbornly give to time thieves. These are things I’ve come close enough to to actually want to talk about them.

But should there be one, just one subject I’d know more than any other, one that would unconditionally inspire me, and that I love above all, it certainly would be my mother. And when I say my mother, I think I mean THE mother at large, the figure she represents.

Because it’s her I always come back to. It’s her I want to see winning the battle, her I want to invent problems to so she can have the credit of solving them all, her through whom I ask myself questions, her I want to hear shout out loud when we didn’t say a thing. It’s her I want to be right when we were wrong, it’s her, no matter what, who’ll have the last word.

Back in the days of I Killed My Mother, I felt like I wanted to punish my mom. Only five years have passed ever since, and I believe that, through Mommy, I’m now seeking her revenge. Don’t ask.

— Xavier Dolan, May 2014

Filmography:

• Matthias & Maxime (2019)
• The Death and Life of John F. Donovan (2018)
• Mommy (2014)
• Tom à la Ferme (2013)
• Laurence Anyways (2012)
• Heartbeats (2010)
• I Killed My Mother (2009)

After having shot a music video in 1:1 last year, it dawned on me that this ratio translated a somewhat unique emotion and sincerity.

The perfect square framed faces with such simplicity, and seemed like the ideal structure for “portrait” shots. No distraction, no affectations are possible in such constricted space. The character is our main subject, inescapably at the center of our attention. Our eyes cannot miss him, her.

1:1 is, besides, the ratio of album covers and CD’s, all of these jackets that have imprinted in our imaginations over time. The Die & Steve Mix 4ever being a leitmotif for us, the use of 1:1 found an additional echo. It is also, to be frank, my DP André Turpin’s favorite ratio which he had, apparently, dreamed of using his entire life without ever daring to do so (he’s also a director, and directed the extremely enjoyable Zigrail, Middle-East road trip shot in black and white and featuring some brutal early John Zorn!).

After having now spent a year with him busting my balls at just about every shot, regretting our infamous ratio, I’ve learned two things : André loves cinemascope and I, for one, have absolutely no regrets in this matter.

— Xavier Dolan, May 2014

Here is a curated selection of links shared on our Facebook page for additional insight/information:

• 7/5/15 – “Directing prodigy Xavier Dolan has made his best film yet, a shocking, wildly inventive black comedy about a single mother bringing up a troubled teenager” Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian – link
• 7/13/15 – For those unacquainted with the young Canadian prodigy Xavier Dolan, the filmmaker behind our upcoming FREE screening of Mommy on 7/23, this is a brilliant primer on his brazen stylistic tendencies published by The Seventh Art. – link
• 7/17/15 – A quintuplet of gorgeous Korean posters for Xavier Dolan’s Mommy – link
• 7/20/15 – After catching our FREE screening of Xavier Dolan’s Mommy this coming Thursday at Buffalo & Erie County Public Library – Central Library’s Mason O. Damon Auditorium we highly recommend you take a listen to this hour long conversation with the youthful filmmaker on Film Society of Lincoln Center’s The Close-Up podcast! – link
• 7/21/15 – Buffalo.com’s Christopher Schobert says Mommy is “undoubtedly a memorable experience featuring a stunning performance from Anne Dorval”! – link