Mommy
Directed by: Xavier Dolan
Written by: Xavier Dolan
Starring: Anne Dorval, Suzanne Clément, Antoine Olivier Pilon, Patrick Huard, Alexandre Goyette, Michèle Lituac, Viviane Pacal, Nathalie Hamel-Roy
Drama - 139 min Reviewed by Charlie Juhl on 29 Jan 2015
Written by: Xavier Dolan
Starring: Anne Dorval, Suzanne Clément, Antoine Olivier Pilon, Patrick Huard, Alexandre Goyette, Michèle Lituac, Viviane Pacal, Nathalie Hamel-Roy
Drama - 139 min Reviewed by Charlie Juhl on 29 Jan 2015
You’re not going to like most of the characters in French-Canadian Xavier Dolan’s Cannes Film Festival Jury Prize winner Mommy. They are not sympathetic, they self-sabotage their well-being in most circumstances while pretending everything is alright, and we cannot begin to empathize with their situations, let alone even strain to relate to them. Then why is Mommy so effective and why do I sing its praises? The performances. Anne Dorval will nail you to the floor. She may play a woman who seems to relish in making questionable life choices, but she does it in the most convincing way possible. I would watch this woman read the phone book.
Dinae ‘Die’ Despres (Dorval) lives in a fantasy land. Abruptly widowed three years earlier, we first meet Die as she’s picking up her son, Steve (Antoine-Olivier Pilon) who is getting kicked out of reform school for his latest violent episode that landed another kid in the hospital. The administrator warns Die no amount of love will save Steve and put him on the right track. Love and wishful thinking are not magic potions. Die winks at her and says she will prove all the skeptics wrong by taking Steve home, schooling him herself, and will straighten out his emotional problems all at the same time. Die can barely keep herself steadily employed and sane; the audience is as skeptical as the administrator at Die’s chances.
Dinae ‘Die’ Despres (Dorval) lives in a fantasy land. Abruptly widowed three years earlier, we first meet Die as she’s picking up her son, Steve (Antoine-Olivier Pilon) who is getting kicked out of reform school for his latest violent episode that landed another kid in the hospital. The administrator warns Die no amount of love will save Steve and put him on the right track. Love and wishful thinking are not magic potions. Die winks at her and says she will prove all the skeptics wrong by taking Steve home, schooling him herself, and will straighten out his emotional problems all at the same time. Die can barely keep herself steadily employed and sane; the audience is as skeptical as the administrator at Die’s chances.
Steve is the reason some folks in the theater will not identify with the film and leave with a bad taste in their mouths. The word violent does not do justice describing everything that is wrong with Steve. He is foul-mouthed, racist, sexist, intimidating, threatening, and ready to explode into a rage at a moment’s notice if something happens which displeases him in the slightest way. I am not ready to diagnose the teenager, but the way in which he loves and dotes on his mom one second and is ready to kill her the next, suggests a severe bipolar disorder. Dolan shot Mommy in a 1:1 aspect ratio meaning the width and length of the screen image are the same. To the viewer, it appears the image is longer than it is wide; Dolan says it frames faces more effectively. Dolan pulls a trick with the aspect ratio when Steve has a good day and skateboards down the middle of the street. It stretches open to a more recognizable and comfortable ratio but contracts again at the start of Steve’s next crisis. The move implies the aspect ratio is connected to Steve’s emotional state. It is 1:1 during Steve’s normal and crisis states but expands when the kid is able to see beyond the end of his nose.
Die loses her menial job. Steve’s court case is around the corner with a large financial verdict expected against him. They have next to nothing going for them and only sort of realize it. Enter Kyla (Suzanne Clement), the across the street neighbor who has been watching it all out her front window. Kyla is a school teacher on a break and has a noticeable stutter impacting her professional and personal relationships, the cause of which is best left to unfold for you on the screen. Kyla starts tutoring Steve and establishes a sort of Mary Poppins relationship with the family.
Kyla can settle the kid down, sometimes. Like most effective teachers, she can spy at times the inner good buried beneath Steve’s layers of afflictions. Kyla also settles Die down in more subtle ways; a soothing conversation, an extra firm arm squeeze. The good intentions are quid pro quo here, almost to a suspiciously ‘too good to be true’ scenario. Kyla’s stutter tends to lighten up and just about disappear when she is with Die and Steve. It returns when she crosses the street to be with her real family, a blatant psychosomatic barrier between households.
Mommy belongs to Anne Dorval though. She is fascinating. She must cry, scream, beg, cajole and while at times she is able to let it go, there is usually a show of false happy in her smile. Die exhibits a cocky exterior, but we see she is terrified inside. She recognizes it is inevitable her good intentions will fail with Steve; she delays the inevitable. Just as the administrator warned Die, good intentions will go nowhere with Steve, her fake smile is all she has to cling to. Take this as a testament to the film’s strengths. I do not identify with any of the characters and can barely muster a small amount of sympathy for their situation, but Anne Dorval’s performance put me in a trance. I say skip the story, watch her.
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