By Chlotrudis Independent Film Society
Rating: 5 cats
Director: Xavier Dolan
Starring: Anne Caron | Evelyne Brochu | Lise Roy | Manuel Tadros | Pierre-Yves Cardinal | Xavier Dolan
Original language title: Tom à la ferme
Country: united_kingdom, united_states
Year: 2015
Running time: 127
Kyle says: “TOM AT THE FARM is a 2013 film (only now receiving its New York release in August 2015) by wunderkind maverick virtuoso genius-boy (as Walter Pidgeon refers to Kirk Douglas in THE BAD AND THE BEAUTIFUL) writer/director Xavier Dolan, who also stars, is the Executive Producer/Producer, and is additionally credited for Film Editing, Costume Design, Dubbing Director, and English Subtitles. Whether you will go with this extraordinary piece of work depends on how you react to the seemingly impossible passivity of the title character, played by Dolan with a shock of unruly dyed blond hair, and almost every moment of his performance in closeup or medium shot.
“Tom visits the farm which is the home of his dead 25-year-old boyfriend Guillaume’s mother and brother. No one is home when he arrives, affording opportunity to inspect the farm, later finding the front door key and letting himself in. He is discovered asleep at the kitchen table by mother Agathe (Lise Roy), who welcomes him as a friend come to pay his condolences, although she does not know who he is. Tom is invited to stay because he claims to want to speak at Guillaume’s funeral, which is comforting to Agathe. Tom is asleep in Guillaume’s bed when he is attacked by Francis (Pierre-Yves Cardinal), the brother who knows exactly who Tom is, setting up a psychotic dynamic between the two men which continues through Tom in the shower, Tom in the bathroom, and Tom in the farm’s cornfield. The apotheosis of attraction and hatred is reached in a tango between Tom and Francis, who hopes his mother will be found dead on the kitchen floor, rather than having to “put her away”; she overhears this before she invites the two for apple pie.
“Tom tells a fictitious tale of sex between Guillaume and Sarah, which is inappropriate for anyone’s sane mother, but is obviously about his own sexual relationship with the dead man; Agathe is deceived and delighted. Later Tom invites his and Guillaume’s friend Sarah (Evelyne Brochu) to the farm, since she has posed as Guillaume’s ‘beard’ before. Francis is immediately abusive, and just when the violence simmering below the surface threatens to boil over, she leaves town on the midnight bus. In a key moment between Tom and Sarah, he protests, ‘They’re like family,’ to which she responds, ‘T’hree weeks ago, they were strangers’. The local bartender tells Tom why Francis is banned from the bar, including an act of violence so brutal that it could only have been inspired by KING KONG (1933). Finally freeing himself from this ‘fucking bunch of goddamn psychos,’ Tom escapes Francis, steals his truck, and departs to Rufus Wainwright’s sublime 2007 anti-American anthem ‘Going to a Town.’ A few offhand shots during the end titles leave unresolved the issue of whether Tom will return to the farm.
“The pathway into the film for me is the exotic, surprising, highly dramatic musical score by Gabriel Yared, which is unquestionably a tribute to the scores of Bernard Herrmann, occasionally referencing his music for the films of Alfred Hitchcock. Yared’s score provides a perfectly clear dramatic counterpoint for the existential passivity of Tom and his reluctance to leave the farm. Additionally the film commences with ‘Les moulins de mon coeur,’ a version with French lyrics by Eddy Marnay, sung by Kathleen Fortin, of Michel Legrand’s Oscar-winning song ‘The Windmills of Your Mind’ for THE THOMAS CROWN AFFAIR (1968), as Tom in his shiny black car drives to the farm. As usual with a film directed by Dolan, the cinematography is breathtaking, in this instance by André Turpin of MOMMY. Xavier Dolan demonstrates a command of visual grammar, an understanding of the accumulation of moments to create a whole, and an ability to steer his actors to passions not even directors with twice his age and experience are capable of. 5 cats
“Monday, August 17, 2015, at City Cinemas Village East, New York.”