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| Roadside |
Mommy is Xavier Dolan’s fifth
feature, about a single mother, Diane (Anne Dorval), struggling to take care of
her over-active and mentally-challenged son, Steve (Antoine Olivier Pilon). Add
into the mix neighbor Kyla (Suzanne Clement), a stay-at-home mother who tutors
Steve. She becomes attracted to this boisterous and messy relationship and
embroiled in the heated triad. Meanwhile, Diane must contend with a choice she
must make: will she commit her son into an institution? With her
son, she cannot work because taking care of him is a full-time job, a constant
responsibility.
This
movie centers on its characters’ delusions and fantasies: the Oedipal
attraction Steve harbors towards his mother, Diane’s belief that she can live
in peace with her son, and Kyla’s desire and secret wish to live a life as thrilling
as the one that unfolds before her throughout the film.
The
film’s comedy is its drama, its sadness is its joy, its abuse is its love.
Steve is a dominating presence, a character capable of extreme empathy and
intolerable cruelty. The beauty of the mother/son relationship is its cynicism,
where the harshest insults are quotidian realities, a relationship as strong
and durable as it is tempestuous and poisonous. Dolan cleverly and humanely
shows us Diane’s emotional limits; when she’s happiest with Steve, she ignores
the lawsuit altogether and pretends it’s all right. Only then, do we realize
that she isn’t going to be able to sustain this relationship for very long.
The
film alternates its narrative perspective between Diane and Steve. Dolan
doesn’t have a primary protagonist, preferring the vague atmospheric tensions
both characters provide equally. Steve seems blissfully unaware his mother can
commit him at any time; Diane, meanwhile, represses the foreboding knowledge.
They are characters that complement each other well. But the idea mainly works
on paper – there’s just too much that distracts from the central relationship.
Kyla
doesn’t feel necessary to what Dolan is
trying to say with Mommy – Clement is a
great actress, and the character doesn’t necessarily detract. Her presence adds an
off-kilter energy with welcome doses of humor. Nevertheless, stuff with her
doesn’t entirely gel into the movie’s central story. By the end of the film,
when Kyla is telling Diane she is leaving for Toronto, it’s not an emotionally-compelling moment. These are great actresses, yet Dolan is unable to offer us the
focused structure to make a moment like that land.
The best tableaux the film provides is the dancing scene, in which all three characters are in the kitchen swaying to the melody. If there weren’t three
other montages, I would call it something truly special. But that scene comes off like reincarnations of other montages, and thus its effectiveness is substantially limited.
Dolan
shoots the movie in a 1:1 ratio, which creates an appropriately claustrophobic mood. It's an interesting choice, one that works in the
beginning but is inconsistently applied. Dolan’s free-wheeling
instinct to occasionally expand the screen is not thought-out enough, detracting from story at hand. Why complicate when you can illuminate?
Mommy never registers a false
note, but it has a lack of focus, inexhaustible emotions, an inconsistent style and an overly-long running-time. Dolan’s fifth film is a missed opportunity that remains a bold and admirable effort. Here is a filmmaker steadily
improving with immense skill and empathy, an ability to elicit powerful
performances, write dynamic dialogue and create a strong visual palette. This was a frustrating viewing experience because Dolan is supremely talented – he just needs to
get out of his own head.
Grade:
B (and an A- for the performances)