For the past year or so, I’ve vehemently defended the work of Xavier Dolan, the 25-year-old Quebecois director who recently won the Cannes Jury Prize for his fifth film, Mommy. The arguments against him are usually the same: his films are mawkish and maudlin, his style pretentious and more as a means of showing off what he can do formally than anything else. But the folks at The Seventh Art (and sponsored by TIFF just in time for Mommy’s premiere at the Torontonian cinematheque for Canada’s Top Ten Film Festival ), an online film magazine, argue that the style to his films is integral to understanding the complex characters he creates. From his first film I Killed My Mother to Mommy, the video essay examines the role of his various formal techniques (slow motion, aspect ratio, etc.) and how they culminate in what essayist Christopher Heron describes as The Dolan Style.
9 years ago
