The Martlet

Who: Director Xavier Dolan
What: J’ai Tué Ma Mère
Where: Odeon Theatre
When: 2:45 p.m., Sunday, Feb. 7

J’ai Tué Ma Mère is one of the best films of 2009, and you probably haven’t even heard of it.

Translated, the title means “I killed my mother.”

An understated cinematic gem, it won a handful of prizes at the Cannes Film Festival and was Canada’s entry to the Academy Awards this year.

What is most intriguing, however, is that it was directed (and written, and produced by, and starring) 19-year-old, Xavier Dolan. The film stands on its own as an interesting, entertaining and moving experience. It is a success for a person of any age, and an even greater accomplishment for someone so young.

The essence of the film can be summed up in one pivotal scene: as the stylish, artistic, independent high school student gets on the bus, being sent away by his parents to boarding school, he turns to his mother and calls her an “ignorant suburbanite”. 

It is meant to be a vicious insult, and a tragic moment in the life of any 17-year-old. Yet the struggle of feeling like an adult trapped in the societal constraint that is a teenage life is comically relatable.

“Stop comparing me to kids of my age,” Dolan says to his fictional mother at one point in the film. “I’m not like them ... and you’re not like their mothers.” 

In another scene, he tells his teacher that his mother is dead — only to later have his mother appear in the classroom. This scene is what gives the film its title. Hubert’s quest for acceptance as an adult results in metaphorical matricide. As much as the film is about the fundamental struggle that this mother and son experience, it is also about the love between mother and child that prevents them from truly drifting apart.

Dolan’s directorial debut is fantastic, and one can only imagine greater things must be to come. It is exciting to see a work by a 19-year-old that recalls other great directors, while also maintaining it’s own dazzling vision and style. It is brashly realistic, but some of the stylized close-ups are something that would not be out of place in a film by Agnès Varda, for example.

Francois Truffaut, arguably one of the greatest French filmmakers (and director of one of Dolan’s favourite films, The 400 Blows), once said, “taste is the result of a thousand distastes.” 

However, there are no artistic missteps in this movie. Dolan is a filmmaker of great talent and discernment. He has crafted a film that is not to be missed.