By Chlotrudis Independent Film Society
Rating: 3.75 cats
Director: Xavier Dolan
Starring: Anne Dorval | François Arnaud | Monique Spaziani | Patricia Tulasne | Suzanne Clément | Xavier Dolan
Original language title: J'ai tué ma mère
Country: canada
Year: 2010
Running time: 96
IMDB: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1424797/
Bruce says: “Xavier Dolan began writing his script for J’AI TUÉ MA MÈRE when he was sixteen with the goal in mind of getting his film into the Cannes Film Festival. Not only did he achieve that goal but he won three awards at Cannes in 2009 at the age of 20.
“J’AI TUÉ MA MÈRE is a comedy loosely based on personal experience and an abundance of marvelous fantasy. In the film Hubert Minel (Xavier Dolan) and his mother Chantale (Anne Dorval) live alone together. Hubert’s father (Pierre Chagnon), whom Hubert rarely visits, is history. Chantale is the type of adult who should never have become a parent. Her child rearing instincts, when they rarely surface, are all wrong. Although she loves her son she often treats him as an inconvenience. These moments fuel Hubert’s irrational side. ‘I could be anyone’s son, but not hers,’ he thinks. Both mother and son are subject to outbursts which always end in a stalemate with neither benefitting. For example, they are in the car and Chantale is putting on her make-up while driving and Hubert has the radio blasting away. Both are annoyed and start screaming at each other. ‘Take the bus,’ Chantale yells as Hubert jumps out of the car.
“Hubert is gay but he has not told his parents. For several months he has been having a hot romance with Antonin (François Arnaud) whose mother is wildly supportive of their relationship futher underlining the divide between Hubert and his mother. Hiding his sexuality is not helping to foster the closeness Hubert craves yet his mother sends no signals that she might be supportive were Hubert to confess. Luckily, a teacher at school takes Hubert under her wing, providing him with a non-threatening surrogate mother.
“After one too many outbursts, Chantale decides Hubert must be sent away to boarding school. The results are disastrous. As heavy handed as the story may sound it is told with lightness and generosity that extend beyond the expected range of director’s age group. The most emotionally painful moments are carefully balanced with a delicious sense of humour. Both Dolan and Dorval are magnificent in their roles. The director strikes only one slightly false note with a fantasy scene involving his teacher running through the woods in a wedding dress. 4 1/2 cats
“(J’AI TUÉ MA MÈRE screened at the 2009 Toronto International Film Festival.)”
Jason says: “So, how important is liking a movie’s main character to your enjoyment of the movie? That’s a question worth asking yourself before sitting down to I KILLED MY MOTHER, because while it’s not hard to find nice things to say about writer/director/star Xavier Dolan’s first film even without mentioning his tender age, the character he wrote for himself is quite the obnoxious little bastard, and knowing that this film is semi-autobiographical may do more to hurt one’s impression of the
filmmaker than help one’s impression of the film.
“Hubert Minel (Xavier Dolan) is sixteen, gay, and fights with his mother Chantale (Anne Dorval) at the drop of a hat – and, honestly, the hat does not actually need to fall. Chantale and Hubert’s father are long-divorced (Minel père just didn’t see himself as the parenting type) and Chantale is, in Hubert’s eyes, hopelessly bougeois. His life really isn’t so bad – he’s a fairly talented artist who has a nice boyfriend in Antonin (François Arnaud) and an encouraging teacher in Julie (Suzanne Clément), and he thinks he’s figured out a way to make things work – he should get an apartment of his own with the money his grandmother has left him in trust. The alternate housing arrangement she comes up with pleases him rather less.
“Suffice it to say, Hubert has some growing up to do, and the folks around him don’t always make it easy. Stepping back from the movie and looking at it as a whole, that progression of the character is handled rather well. Dolan isn’t subtle with how he shows us that Hubert does, in fact, care for his mother despite conflicting feelings (the video diary entry is as close to the writer just handing character information to an audience as you can get, and having it be found is a clumsy plot device), but that fits with the character’s tendency to be overdramatic. And we clearly see that said tendency comes from maman; neither she nor any of the supporting characters are an easy-to-emulate example of mature adulthood.
“Xavier Dolan and Anne Dorval give fine performances as the two main players in this drama. There’s familiarity and tension between them that seems to have both been there forever but is also new enough to leave them at their wits’ ends. Dorval shows us Chantale as a woman who still, after sixteen years, doesn’t always have the most accurate maternal instincts. She continually nails Chantale going from almost sly and funny in her responses to Hubert to frustrated beyond the ability to handle the situation well. It’s a performance that earns sympathy with caveats. To a certain extent, the same is true of Dolan’s performance, although the caveats are initially almost overwhelming. It’s a fine evocation of a kid who is angered by almost everything but only has one target to vent it at, and serves as a fine depiction of a reasonably intelligent person decidedly lacking in emotional maturity. Considering that the story is at least somewhat autobiographical, it’s impressive that Dolan opts to play Hubert as so unsympathetic.
“And, sometimes, the fact that Hubert Minel is a jackass makes Xavier Dolan a little harder to take. Some of his devices seem pretentious – the black-and-white video diaries mentioned above, or how he’ll occasionally do clever things in crude ways. Witness the montages he occasionally uses for scene breaks, or how a scene of Hubert and Chantale speaking at a dinner table goes from a two-shot to cuts of each pressed against the edge of the screen. A more practiced filmmaker may communicate a sense of separation there, while Dolan communicates that he really wants to communicate a sense of separation. He’s at least ambitious in the right direction, though, and for a kid just out of high school, he’s quite good at directing actors and approaching rather recent experiences with maturity.
“A little bit of acknowledging your faults can go a long way, though. I KILLED MY MOTHER can be as trying as its main character, the sort of independent movie best experienced in a theater not because impressive cinematography requires the big screen, but because it’s a lot harder to quit on the movie before the full picture comes into focus. It’s ultimately rewarding, but as in raising a gifted but difficult teenager, the rewards come after a fair amount of annoyance. 3 3/4 cats
“Seen 22 November 2010 at the Brattle Theatre
(CineCaché)”
Thom says: “There’s quite a story here for this interesting entry. It premiered at TIFF 2009 but I was unable to score a ducat after the big buzz. Then it never was released. From the hip reception this film received I eventually bought Dolan’s next film HEARTBEATS (2010) & was so enthralled with it I was already to accept him as the L’Enfant terrible which honorific had already been given to him. So I broke down & purchased a European version. I was so disappointed that I originally was going to pass on a review but the fact that his 3rd film LAURENCE ANYWAYS will premiere at TIFF 2012 & he’s scored world-class actor Nathalie Baye in a starring role I changed my mind. With I KILLED MY MOTHER it’s easy to see what the hubbub was stylistically and narrative-wise but the young teen Hubert Minel (played bravely by Dolan, who I had seen earlier in the really terrifying horror film MARTYRS) and his mother Chantale Lemming (Dolan who you’ll recall from the parallel universe entry MASTER KEY) are both such dreary, unlikable horror-stories so their love/hate relationship was excruciating to watch. So, ironically, I probably would have never would have bothered with HEARTBEATS. The jury is still out. 3 cats“