Cannes. "I Killed My Mother"

By David Hudson on 05/22/2009

[Updated through 5/24]

"Canadian director Xavier Dolan's 'I Killed my Mother' killed the competition at the 41st Director's Fortnight with the film taking three out of four major feature film prizes as the Festival de Cannes sidebar wrapped Friday night in Cannes," reports Rebecca Leffler in the Hollywood Reporter, where, a few days ago now, Peter Brunette called it "a somewhat uneven film that demonstrates a great deal of talent. In the vein of 'Ma Vie en Rose' (if not quite as polished and mature) and other gay adolescent coming-of-age films of comic rebellion, it's a congeries of brilliantly achieved cinematic moments and repetitive, massively self-indulgent gestures of acting out."

"Pages of ink will be spilled on the multihyphenate helmer's youth (he's 20) and precocity, and there's much to praise, especially the oh-so-real dialogue, but true psychological penetration is lacking and Dolan's hunger to prove his talent results in a superfluity of styles," writes Jay Weissberg in Variety.

"To say that 16-year-old Hubert (Dolan) and his mother Chantale (Anne Dorval) have a love-hate relationship is a gross understatement," writes Allan Hunter in Screen. "Hubert is a petulant, floppy-haired adolescent who has grown to hate every single aspect of his mother's life from the messy way she eats to the horrible fashion faux pas that constitute her wardrobe. He isn't shy about telling her. Arguments become shouting matches with Hubert displaying the kind of uncontrollable rage that would have done the late Klaus Kinski proud.... 'I Killed My Mother' succeeds so well because it reflects a truth about human relationships that any viewer can recognise. The bond between Hubert and Chantale may be more extreme and exaggerated than most but in the pettiness, manipulations, reconciliations and heartache it expertly conveys the way we all have the ability to hurt the ones we love the most."

Update, 5/24: "No literal murder takes place in this energetic character piece," writes Mike D'Angelo at the AV Club, "but the relationship between mother (Anne Dorval, superb) and son seethes with enough mutual acrimony, complicated by fleeting bursts of real tenderness, that it's a wonder neither one of them keels over from sheer exhaustion; at times I was reminded of the duet between Alison Steadman and Jane Horrocks in Mike Leigh's 'Life Is Sweet,' which is some of the highest praise I can bestow when it comes to magnificently heightened and yet entirely credible parent-child relationships."

Coverage of the coverage: Cannes 2009.

[Photo: "I Killed My Mother," Filmoption, 2009]

Tags: Anne Dorval, Canadian Cinema, Cannes 2009, Xavier Dolan