It's tempting to get caught up in the backstory of this film and focus on the fact that Xavier Dolan was only 17 when he wrote this film, 19 when he directed and starred in it, and had never produced so much as a 30 second short film before making this one, funded largely by inheritance money. Fascinating, yes, but don’t let that story obscure just what a terrific bit of filmmaking I Killed My Mother is entirely in its own right. Plainly put, except in the most extraordinary years, a movie of this quality most certainly rates among the year's best.
So, put on the backburner the mindboggling realization that Dolan has done at 19 what the vast majority of us will never accomplish, that is, produce a legitimate work of art that communicates to its audience in innovative, challenging and affecting ways and instead consider what makes I Killed My Mother tick. The storyline is instantly recognizable to any post-Holden Caulfield society. Hubert, an artistically-inclined, edgy and rebellious, gay 16 year-old, has a series of increasingly angry confrontations with his (to his mind) tasteless and decidedly middlebrow, lower middle class single mother over just about every aspect of their existence.
Things reach a breaking point when the mother, played beautifully, without affectation or condescension, by Suzanne Clement, decides that Hubert must go to a boarding school in the middle of nowhere. Hubert revolts and matters, which had bordered on black comedy up until this point, take a darker turn.
It is not the story so much as the methods Dolan uses to tell his story that are so memorable. Clearly a keen student of both literature and film, Dolan wears his influences on his sleeve. Some of the film's most striking scenes are clearly indebted to Wong Kar-Wai, and in particular his adoration of slow motion to heighten both our sensual delight in the setting and our emotional response to key moments of intensity. Dolan also borrows from Truffault's 400 Blows, particularly in a scene where he tells a teacher his mother is dead, only to have the angry "corpse" appear at school to castigate her son publically for his ruse.
Hubert's secret boyfriend (how his mother learns of his homosexuality is one of the film's many wonderful, darkly comic moments) is named Rimbaud (coincidentally, another "tortured" artist producing high quality work as a teenager.)
Dolan is able to pay homage to his predecessors without it feeling too much like theft, because he has crafted around these references a film that clearly expresses Dolan's ideas in his own distinctive voice. The scenes between Hubert and his mother, which are the film’s emotional centrepiece, are examples of just such a strong sense of voice.
Dolan portrays this raging conflict in an honest and open manner. Even though the characters are obviously based on himself and his mother, Dolan is even handed in his treatment of their clashes, allowing us to alternately sympathize with and shake our heads at each character. In the end, you end up feeling great empathy for both. It is a tricky tightrope walk, yet Dolan masters it with apparent ease.
I Killed My Mother is an impressive debut effort. That it is the product of a 17 year old's imagination and a 19 year-old's hard work is a minor miracle. It is exciting to imagine what Dolan may have up his sleeve in the decades to come.
