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| (Roadside Attractions) |
There’s
a fervent spirit to Xavier Dolan’s wildly-uneven Mommy, exuding passion and helping to maintain an emotional
resonance throughout even as the movie itself never completely works. Dolan, a filmmaker
in his 20s, demonstrates extraordinary raw talent as well as some age-related
limitations; the director achieves a depth of feeling many twice his age would
be glad to reach, but his approach is also overwrought and lacking in a particular
kind of confidence.
Mommy,
predominantly and unusually shot in a 1:1 aspect ratio, is coarsely authentic
and specific. Dolan’s words and phrasing spill out of actors like perverse
poetry, a playful “fuck” here, a profanity-laden tirade there. This film – in
which Diane (Anne Dorval) struggles to hold it together after her
severely-ADHD-plagued adolescent son Steve (Antoine-Olivier Pilon) returns home
– understands that words convey everything: familiarity, resentment, pain,
uncertainty, fear. Dolan is immensely skillful with such elicitations: Steve’s psychotic
episodes get under your skin less because they intimidate, and more because
they radiate a harrowing vulnerability. Instances like this remind that Steve
and Diane, with such distinct dialects and senses of humor and expressions of
intimacy, are uncommon to the cinematic landscape. Their gritty, make-ends-meet
lifestyle feels fresh simply for its presence – even a class-conscious film
like Two Days, One Night surveys
pristine suburban streets and pricey little coffee shops – but the level of
detail is marvelous. The boxed wine masking as something more, the cigarette
smoke seeping into roasting vegetables, the booming laughter overpowering a
dinner party – you feel the affectionate touch with which Dolan textures these
moments, catch his soft infusions of humor, and ultimately, understand that these are his heroes. Mommy works as a messy, operatic tribute to
them.
More
specifically, this is Diane’s movie. I wasn’t always clued into the purpose
behind the film’s visual trick – which, upon review, was a fine stylistic
choice that Dolan tried to fashion as something more intellectual – but
whenever Dorval graced the screen, I got it. In this tight frame, Diane might
as well be posing for a portrait: Dolan’s lighting here is always luminous, and
Dorval, smacking on gum or stretching out her short blouse or gulping another
cup of boxed wine, goes into ultra-character mode. Diane can be nasty and abrasive,
and she does have a breaking point, but for Dolan, this is a figure of tremendous
valor and tenacity, one that deserves to be seen, heard, honored, and contemplated
over. Mommy takes Diane to a very
dark and complicated place, and Dorval’s remarkable embodiment of the character
throws any forced sympathy out the window: we’re permitted to really grapple with
this heroine and her choices. In a stunning sequence late into the film, Diane
imagines a life in which things stay okay – in which her son’s self-destructive
nature is quelled, and he goes to college, and gets married, and lives his life
– before realizing that fantasy’s impossibility. In a bold and affecting
climax, Diane makes a decisive, controversial choice. And her final scene – she
lays it all out, taking responsibility and owning her decision – is simply
spellbinding for its emotional rigor.
If
this all sounds extremely complimentary, it’s meant to. Dolan is comfortable
with a Top 40 soundtrack and screaming matches that verge on monotony, but he’s
able to transcend cliché and tonal simplicity with startling consistency. His
musical sequences, most notably to Oasis’ “Wonderwall,” manage an impressive
effectiveness and visual intrigue; everything gets thrown into a sensory
melting pot, and what emerges is something curiously, enormously moving. A lot
of this has to do with Dolan’s actors. Jubilantly
expressive and visibly fragile, Pilon is revelatory as Steve. He’s commanding and shows considerable range. As
for the actress in the titular role: my God is Dorval brilliant here. Every
movement in every part of her body, every delivery of every word, every tear
and laugh and scream – like Marion Cotillard in the aforementioned Two Days, this performance is a
top-to-bottom tour-de-force, a character creation of stunning complexity and limitless
passion.
Mommy
is a film of many virtues, but it’s profoundly flawed and jarringly undisciplined.
A third character is thrown into the mix, Kaya (Suzanne Clement), a housewife
battling a stutter who finds meaning by spending time with Diane and Steve. It
doesn’t make much of an impact. The movie has a fascinating, strong core in the
depiction of protectionism between mother and son; Kaya’s presence magnifies in
the film and mostly distracts from that main conceit. She tutors Steve and
joins the two on their various adventures. Dolan brings misfits together and finds them bringing joy into each other’s
lives; though intriguing, this secondary element is too distant from the movie’s center. And Kaya’s character doesn’t work. She has a husband and
daughter who exist in the periphery, and things seem fine enough; we don’t know
enough about her, and aren’t given much of a reason to care about her. Dolan
brings things around solidly in a final, devastating scene between Diane and
Kaya – but it still doesn’t merit the substantially uninvolving material that
leads to it.
I
don’t usually like making these kinds of declarations, but: Dolan’s age is clearly
related to the film’s problems. He’s too in his own head, and Mommy as a whole is overlong and in need
of a serious edit. About midway through – when Diane and Steve (and Kaya) are building
themselves up – Steve literally pulls the screen outward, and suddenly Mommy is in widescreen. The movie goes
from “Things are difficult” to “Things are good,” and with an interesting if
obvious hand, Dolan uses the width of the lens to communicate this. But he’s
only halfway through – you know things won’t be so sunny for long – and so he
recycles the idea. He narrows the lens again, and expands it, and then narrows
it once more: the approach becomes unbearably heavy-handed, an indication of
when Dolan’s ignorance of subtlety becomes insufficient. Aside from being
excessively obvious, this visual trickery undercuts some really powerful stuff
happening onscreen. Here, Dolan is his own worst enemy. He has about four good
endings within the film’s final forty-five minutes, but he presses on, still managing
to land beautiful moments but with diminishing returns, and finishes at a
merely decent place. Watching Mommy,
a film of great distinction and passion, you desperately want Dolan to get out
of his own head and let the movie rest. But, in too many senses of the word,
his work emerges as overstuffed.
Dolan’s
style is just that, though: heightened, uneven, expressive. And Mommy is, considering its flaws, unusually
moving and affecting. There’s a great movie within Dolan’s final product, one
that doesn’t undermine substance with a flat visual device or an unnecessary
extra character. What we get is a decent film that exhibits greatness, and is
always deeply-felt. There’s an intense power to Mommy – an inescapably resonant story and a pair of haunting
performances – and this film inches Dolan away from mere idiosyncrasy and
towards genuine vitality. Presently, he’s awkwardly in-between, and his
audience can only wait for an inevitable leap forward.
Grade: B