The Night Logan Woke Up

This is exactly what I've been craving from Xavier Dolan, and what he excels at most successfully. La nuit où Laurier Gaudreault s'est réveillé is a decades spanning tale of the Larouche family. Four children riddled with pain, guilt, loss, and loneliness, and a mother who tries her best to hold it all, and everyone, together. It's pure Dolan family drama, but this time with even more time to flesh out the characters, the situations, and the conflict fully, with plenty of room to breathe.

Dolan employs more thriller elements into this series than what we are used to from his work. The story is quite intense, rife with troubles and questions throughout. Each member of the Larouche family has their own story, and the layers of these people are peeled back with each new episode, leading to a beautifully moving finale. Mireille and Madeleine's scene in the final episode made me weep, and then again (or just more, as it was continuous) soon after with two perfectly executed matching shots of a backyard in two different timelines.

The whole cast is very strong, my favourites being a very animated Magalie Lepine-Blondeau, Julie Le Breton, Patrick Hivon, and of course, Anne Dorval, Dolan regular and one of the greatest talents to come out of Canada, giving one of the performances of her career, maybe only second to Mommy (2014).

The techs of the series are unbelievable. The breathtaking cinematography from Andre Turpin is deliciously rich and grainy, with endless depth of colour and light. The production design is so meticulously detailed, I don't know if I've ever seen anything like it before on film. The music, as always in a Dolan project, is excellent and used perfectly, and the score is absolutely gorgeous. It all works cohesively together to transport you to different places and times in the story.

All in all, this is top tier Dolan. Melodramatic flourishes, slow motion, a style to die for, beautiful performances, everything you come to a Dolan project for is all there. To recently read that Dolan has no projects lined up and that he wants to stop making films (at least for the time being) is such a crushing blow, especially after giving us this. I hope he doesn't make us wait too long, I'll be waiting with bated breath.

Some great actors and setting but the focus gets a bit lost due to too many details and flashbacks happening. I didn't like the focus on drugs addictions and despair it didn't need to take that much space.

It's not hard to guess what did happen in the plot - it's a bit long to get to the end of it plus it's just a big deal out of not that much... Love that they recasted the actors from the original play! And very good set of unknown yet talented Canadian actors. Absolutely loved the Chantal character and the actress. Awesome music and imagery, I really liked the introduction with the credits at each episode but it feels like it's not adapted for this show!!

This is one of the most intense and impressive series that I've watched for a long time. Three brothers and a sister, haunted and traumatized by a big secret in their teenage past, are suddenly thrown together at the deathbed of their mother, and have to find a way to cope with eachother and their past. The story is extremely involving, as with every new episode the secret gradually gets revealed. All family members have their own background, their behavior seems at times totally erratic, but it's all interwoven with each other, and all the time not only the resentment and anger but also the love between them is tangible.

The acting of the whole cast is excellent, it would be injust to pick some of them out. But Julie Le Breton and Patrick Hivon are both absolutely amazing as Mireille and Julien, who alternately hate and love each other; their terrible row in the 4th episode is so dramatic and relentlessly intense that it's almost unbearable to watch, and I was constantly in tears when we reached the last episode (just watch that emotional phone call that Mireille has from her car with her unsuspecting mother!). The writing and direction is very intelligent, with the camera all the time right on top of the characters or circling around them, adding to the dynamic feeling, and there's a clever use of flashbacks, with at the end (thank god!) all the answers that you need.

An amazing series by filmmaker Xavier Dolan, and highly recommended, albeit not for the tender souls: it's extremely harsh and realistic.

I started to give this series a 7 but then realized I had just binge-watched the whole thing in one sitting. It's after 1 in the morning and I have to work tomorrow! It was so good I lost track of time. So I have to drop an 8. It's like I wasn't even aware of how captivated I had become. Amazing script and performances. I got so sucked in to the characters I forgot they were actors. There were a few dream-sequences and flashbacks that I thought were a bit too stylized, but that's minuscule stuff. I don't want to go into particulars because I don't want to do a spoiler review, but let's just say it keep you guessing on many fronts, and the reveal is not what I originally thought it would be. A captivating and complex drama and just beautiful film making overall. A truly human story.

The performances were great, some scenes were drawn out I almost yawned. I couldn't find the subtitles for the last two episodes so I bailed out because I can't get French Canadian. But I salute the effort that Dolan put into this, he's certainly a talented filmmaker and this could open the door to more massive productions in the future.

I like the Dysfunctional Family theme, and it's exactly what this show is about. It gave me some serious Six Feet under vibes, what with the death of a parent, the embalming business, a family torn apart. Anyways, if you're into those elements, I suggest you give it a shot.