Xavier Dolan nails first feature J’ai Tue Ma Mere at age 19
The tangled mess of rebellious youth has long offered a well-spring of inspiration for filmmakers — François Truffaut’s first feature The 400 Blows for one introduced one of cinema’s most influential voices with a semi-autobiographical reminiscence of his own growing pains in Paris (and featuring a group of characters that formed the basis for four subsequent sequels).
Following a similar path Québécois filmmaker Xavier Dolan’s debut film J’ai tué ma mere ( I Killed My Mother ) acts as a modern update of The 400 Blows albeit one produced directed and starring a filmmaker still himself in his teens. Currently 21 Dolan wrote the script at the astoundingly tender age of 16.
Gay teenager Hubert Minel (Dolan) and his single mother Chantale (Anne Dorval) live in a cramped house in modern-day Quebec their daily interactions composed of bitter arguing and spiteful commentary. Dolan presents both characters to us as flawed individuals; surprisingly viewers empathize with the mother as often as they do with Hubert. Where Hubert’s aggression is fully at the surface — and often screamed into his mother’s poker face — Chantale is passive-aggressive to the point of suffocation. Dolan’s greatest trick however is transforming what’s initially a repetitive shouting match between two (relatively) unlikeable characters into a uniquely human portrait of the mother-son dynamic.
While Dolan says he never intended I Killed My Mother to be an entry into the gay film canon the revelation of his own sexuality via his on-edge on-screen character is one of the most honest portrayals of young queer identity on screen. And while Hubert’s queerness is undoubtedly a major defining point of I Killed My Mother ’s impact it is also one left decidedly unquestioned. While his relationship with his mother is the definition of dysfunctional Hubert’s scenes with his first boyfriend Antonin (François Arnaud) display a warmth and connection lacking elsewhere in his life.
Devoid of a father figure for much of his life (Pierre Chagnon appears late in the film as Chantale’s final resort for assistance; his departure after Hubert’s birth is summed up in saying that “fatherhood just wasn’t his thing”) Hubert’s difficult transference into manhood isn’t blamed on his single-parent home. Instead Dolan’s script mentions on several occasions how the Minel family is “different” from the lives of “other kids.” All families work by different rules — no two are the same — and in I Killed My Mother the major point of contention between mother and son lies in either party’s sheer inability to accommodate the other’s viewpoints.
That’s not to say there isn’t a warm heart at the center of I Killed My Mother . Dorval’s climactic telephone outburst to a misogynist boarding-school headmaster (further shades of The 400 Blows ) is a revelatory moment on behalf of all single mothers. And while neither character gives much warmth to the other directly Dolan peppers the script with moments of heartbreaking gestures gone unnoticed. In one Hubert asks his mother what she’d do should he die that very day. Watching him walk into the distance and out of earshot she quietly sighs “I’d die tomorrow.”
Watching I Killed My Mother Dolan’s filmmaking influences are easy to recognize. Motifs and visual styling calling upon Gus van Sant Ingmar Bergman and Wong Kar Wai are plentiful but they’re accomplished beautifully in their own right.
Some have taken these easily identifiable references as a chance to criticize Dolan but that’s not entirely fair. Dolan is filtering his personal inspirations and it’s actively shaping him as an artist — in the same way that Hubert absorbs the writing of Cocteau or includes his boyfriend’s James Dean posters as part of his entrance into adulthood.
There are flaws to be sure yet they are all simply overcome by I Killed My Mother ’s masterful finale.
Dolan came home from last year’s Cannes film festival with no less than four trophies under his arm an auspicious start for a fresh-faced filmmaker. Yet what emerges from I Killed My Mother is the arrival of a major talent in world cinema joining the lineage of not only Quebec’s finest filmmakers but the world’s as well.
