Director: Xavier Dolan
Screenplay: Xavier Dolan
Producers: Xavier Dolan
Starring: Xavier Dolan, Anne Dorval, Suzanne Clement, François Arnaud
Year: 2009
Country: Canada
Running time: 100min.

(4.5/5)

I‘ve put off writing about my favorite film of the festival because honestly, I don’t know how to put a film that is so personal, introspective, and yet explosive into words. But I also don’t want to just let it fade away without talking about it. The fact that it’s a first feature written, directed by, and starring a 19-year-old (a fact I did not realize until after I saw it and was blown away) only makes it more amazing without in any way qualifying the praise the film deserves.

In the highly autobiographical story, Xavier Dolan plays his alter-ego Hubert, a 16-year-old French Canadian boy whose relationship with his mother is strained, to say the least – to the point that when a school assignment requires him to talk about his mother’s occupation, he tries to get around it by telling his teacher that his mother is dead. This could be the start of just another teenage rebellion story, and superficially, it sort of is. In black and white intercuts, Hubert explains to his camcorder that he can’t manage to really love his mother the way he knows he should, even though he cares about her the way he’d care about any other human being. Other times he acknowledges that most everyone goes through some stage of hatred for their mother, but that his is different. So far, so emo. But there’s a quality of thoughtfulness and depth in the way these intercut scenes interact with the actual scenes between Hubert and his mother Chantale that transcends surface description.

When we see them together, yes, we see a mother and son who get along about as well as any mother who’s not quite ready to give up control and a son who’s more than ready to be on his own. But we also see a mother and son who desperately WANT to love each other – and when Dolan begins to show more of Chantale’s point of view and she talks about how close their relationship was when Hubert was younger, it feels both revelatory and obviously true. This is one of the most complex, individual, and yet relatable mother-son relationships I’ve ever seen on film – in fact, I’ll expand that to mother-child, since I’m a daughter and even though I never fought with my mother the way Hubert and Chantale fight, I definitely identified with many of the emotions and power struggles they go through.

It doesn’t help matters that Hubert is gay, a fact his mother doesn’t become aware of until well into the film; it’s not that he’s not out (he has a committed boyfriend), but it’s just one thing on a long list of things that he feels his mother won’t understand, that make him “different,” so he neglects to tell her. Most reviews and synopses of the film foreground this part of the story, but honestly, it’s not as central as you might expect. It’s a factor, of course, but the focus of the film is not really on Hubert’s sexuality, except insofar as it is an integral part of his emerging identity. In fact, the most stable things in Hubert’s life are probably his relationship with Antonin (a potential disruption to it never feels particularly threatening) and his connection to his teacher, who encourages his artistic sense and writing ability – a side of him that comes out very strongly in the beautiful flights of fancy that both escape him from the real world and complement the main story.

I Killed My Mother left me overwhelmed, moved, hopeful, and as if I had been especially privileged to have seen it. Xavier Dolan was not at the festival with his film (François Arnaud and Suzanne Clement, who play Antonin and his mother, answered questions charmingly after the film), because he’s off shooting his second feature, now at age 20. I’m not sure how he’s going to top this one – he’s definitely set the bar high for himself. But I’m eager to see what else he comes up with as his filmmaking continues. I Killed My Mother is Canada’s official entry for the Best Foreign Language Film Academy Award, and at this point I wouldn’t be surprised to see it and Michael Haneke’s The White Ribbon duking it out all the way until the ceremony. I believe the film is slated for a US release in early 2010.