Some movies want to wear you down—an approach that seems logical for, say, a World War II tank picture like Fury. It’s not so obvious why Xavier Dolan’s award-winning Mommy seeks the same effect. This 139-minute domestic drama is a tornado of emotional (and sometimes physical) fury, with occasional joys sprinkled throughout. But man, is it a chore to watch. Dolan, a 25-year-old French-Canadian filmmaker, burns through ideas and situations with the urgency of youth, a blazing rush that creates a sometimes-exciting mess.
Much of the film’s fire comes from a teenager, Steve (Antoine-Olivier Pilon), who suffers from extreme ADHD and acts out in violent ways. He’s home with his single mother, Diane (Anne Dorval), who can’t handle him—no one could. In Dorval’s superb performance, we get a full portrait of this woman: a middle-aged former wild child who is nobody’s idea of Mother of the Year, yet who watches over her son with ferocious, wolf-like attention. Their volatile relationship plays out in an incongruously clean, tidy Canadian suburb. That’s where they meet Kyla (sad-eyed Suzanne Clement), whose life has slowed because of a vocal stutter, and whose suburban-wife boredom is lifted for a spell in her contact with these astonishing neighbors. Scenes tumble across the screen in a helter-skelter way, as though Steve’s mercurial moods were dictating the progress of the movie we’re watching.
The precocious Dolan—who’s already directed five features, beginning with I Killed My Mother—has shot Mommy in a square aspect ratio, which is really going to cause problems for home viewers who must have their widescreen TVs filled from side to side. The overbearing technique (which opens up at a couple of key moments) increases the sense of claustrophobia, I guess, even though your eye gets used to it after a few minutes. One of those moments, late in the film, provides Mommy with one of its finest sequences, a genuinely heartrending fantasy of what the future could be if only Steve were like other people. It’s the kind of daydream a long-suffering mother might allow herself in the midst of an ongoing household nightmare. At times like that, you can see the talent that lies beneath Dolan’s aggressive method, and the promise of something great in his future.
film@seattleweekly.com
MOMMY Opens Fri., Feb. 6 at Guild 45th. Rated R. 139 minutes.
