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    Mommy

    Reviewed by
    pietroantoni@

    I am following Xavier Dolan's films religiously though I must admit I missed TOM A LA FERME which I will be seeing soon. Writer, Director, Editor and often Star, this 25 year old is a Canadian phenom! After being lauded at the Cannes Film Festival and having just won the César as Best Foreign Film in France over a formidable field ( including Budapest Hotel), Dolan and his film have cleaned up at the Canadian Film Awards. It is an act of stupidity that MOMMY was not nominated for a Golden Globe or for an Oscar Foreign Film when winning so many awards world wide and let's not forget the 15 minute standing ovation at Cannes after it's screening.

    Mommy is one big intense film and you better be ready for all the boundaries it pushes. I have heard ridiculous complaints about swearing and other such stupidities when this is all a part of society's fabric in this day and age from silly schoolboys and girls to the more mature set, shall we say. What film has no swearing, I would love to know!? The Box Screen, almost reminiscent of films of yore was an incredible tool to draw us more intimately into this rough house of a movie. How about Dolan himself pushing us to extremes of emotion and intensity with his script, direction and the cutting of the film, all superb. He is unafraid to explore all that is violent and shocking and if this means being course and crude, he goes for it big time. This movie is no film for SISSIES!

    Mommy has very strong, flawless performances that rival the great performances from any where around the globe. It won 3 of 4 Canadian Acting Film Awards... my greatest of compliments to Miss Anne Dorval who is positively pitch perfect in everything she says or does. The filming must have drained all those concerned. The disorder of the son is treated in such realistic terms as to become troubling... horrific. Imagine having to live through this nightmare. The inter-personal relationships, I believe, not only in this film but in other Dolan films reflect that there is obviously a core of dysfunction within the Dolan family though love and a connection still exist between real life Dolan and his mother. And we witness this in the film MOMMY. It's impossible to miss.

    Very few if any faults are to be found in this film. Look at the photography, take the music into account, the perfection of Dolan's editing, Everything is authentic as it gets. It's a gritty piece of film that will devastate more than a few. If this film leaves you even remotely indifferent then you are not human. One should not be fussing about the cursing or even the extremes in many aspects of the film, rather the over-all depiction of a desperate situation that will have you reeling from start to finish as human tensions are strained like some elastic band about to snap at any given moment. Wow! This Dolan film takes you on a journey you'll never be able to push to the side... One word on the Quebécois language of the film. I speak French fluently, but must admit I was having some difficulty adjusting to a sound I dislike intensely.

    Dolan himself speaks in that manner yet I wish he had honed the spoken word into a more holistic French tongue. My one complaint.

    10
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    pietroantoni@  4.3.2015 age: 36-49 14,551 reviews

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