Mommy

In a Montreal suburb, a single mother with financial and employment difficulties reunites with her violent teenage son who is being released from a detention centre. More chaos ensues.

It would be very tempting to call this film a "kitchen sink drama". There are many explosive scenes which are cathartic. Most films would have only a few such scenes, maybe only one at the climactic finale. While the catharsis might seem too much, every one of those scenes works well because of the great talent of director Xavier Dolan and his equally talented cast.

There are thankfully lighter scenes that show the love in the dysfunctional family and their ability to have fun especially as they are joined by a mysterious neighbour across the street, Kyla, who seems to have her own troubles. Her troubles seem lessened as she bonds with the unusual mother-son duo. Kyla's situation seems a bit too mysterious at times. As a subplot, it could have used a few hints to tap viewers further into the reasons why she prefers the family across the street to her own.

The film's greatest strengths are two scenes near the end. One is the perfectly executed climactic scene. The other is the one that follows - a very melancholy scene of transition with which most viewers could sadly identify.

As mentioned, Dolan has directed a superb cast. As the troubled teenager, Antoine Olivier Pilon has the perfect balance of rage and vulnerability. As the neighbour Kyla, Suzanne Clément is very believable as someone facing change and loosening up especially when she has fits of uncontrollable laughter. As the mother, Anne Dorval gives Dolan another superb performance as she did with "I Killed My Mother" (2009). Her range in the final two pivotal scenes display true brilliance. - dbamateurcritic

RATING: 9/10

OUTSTANDING ACHIEVEMENT: Performance by Anne Dorval

Anne Dorval is far and away the best actress I have had the pleasure to watch in the past couple years. She was solid in J'ai tuer ma mere. She is explosive in Mommy! I haven't written a review yet but her performance encouraged me to do so. Antoine-Olivier Pilon was great, and Suzanne Clement was also top notch.

I've never been so deeply affected by a movie. I went back and forth between laughter and tears throughout the entire movie. There were several scenes that I related to....

Something that really resonated with me was the scenes where the 3 main characters were laughing, dancing, enjoying life. I personally have a hard time remembering the moments in my life where I was truly happy. I believe that is because in those moments I was so deeply immersed in conversation and laughter that my brain was incapable of creating a memory. While watching Mommy I wasn't able to remember those moments in my life but I was able to make the connection because the performances and script were so realistic. Thank you Xavier Dolan! Waiting for more...

"What does anyone want but to feel a little more free." Godspeed You! Black Emperor.

Mommy is a film about extraordinary, ordinary people. Individual scenes may be small and everyday, but what Mommy has to say is bigger, deeper: about life itself. The film reminded me of the above quote and freedom and our quest for it is the biggest thing Mommy has to talk about for me. It's about this and also about love and family and how those closest to us are so entwined they're not entirely separate beings to us. It's easily Dolan's most affecting work to date because within it every scene stems from and is full of emotion and conveys this to the audience.

In fact the film is so filled with emotion it is hard to remember the extremes it reached. It is so devastating by the end that I had to really think back to recall how I'd laughed out loud earlier on. There is a lot of humour in the film (in its observation of characters and what they say and do, but the time that got me most of all was when two characters laugh so hysterically you can't help but laughing out loud too – there's a real danger of us all descending into uncontrollable laughter alongside the ladies on screen!) which made me glad to watch it in a full cinema where the reaction could be heard from the audience. Despite this, by the end Dolan puts you through the wringer, and all that is left is our heartbreak for his characters and that that quest could never be.

Dolan's characters, for me are always his greatest strength. Not so much the specifics of them (though I must say these three are unforgettable in that sense!) but how they work. Since his first film, he has managed to express often deep or complex aspects about who his characters (and thus, who we all!) are inside in a way where I feel it. It isn't a thing that is easy to talk about because for me Dolan can tap into the kind of things the people in his films are and feel and do that often defy rational logic but yet which we all understand totally. Wow, confusing, much?

Anyway, here too, Die, Steve and Kyla (all exceptionally portrayed) are the heart of the film. They all feel like real people and despite the 2.5 hour running time, somehow at the end of the film you feel they've been snatched away from you. All actors can convey so much in an expression or action that you feel a world of their emotion and understand things about them without them needing to be said.

The three main characters in the film all become tied to each other in a way where they're kind of enmeshed. This is most true with Steve and Die who I feel are not entirely two separate people. They are Son and Mother, but more than this – they are man and wife, lovers, little kids – sister and brother, he's prince to her queen and Steve can be the father and Die the child. He is she and she is he and this is a bond that is wrapped up in who these people are. This makes the love Dolan's familial pairings have for each other unbreakable. Steve and Die fiercely are protective of each other: above all else. Yet in this, as in Dolan's other films, people entwined together struggle to exist almost as one being when despite how interwoven they are, they are individuals too. How to be separate, yet one? Dolan's characters push each other away and pull each other tight but they can never be entirely individual, nor can they escape each other. This is for me the true link between all of Dolan's films thus far.

I just want to say something briefly about the very start to illustrate the detail I felt in the film, without describing every detail which would sound trite. Though we'll come to know Die, Mommy of the title as many things, here we are first introduced to her as Mommy: she is shown in a visual sense as the roots, the trunk of the family tree.

I guess I should talk about the fact that the film is shot in a square of screen and to be honest I barely noticed it until a truly glorious moment when the screen opens up as a character exclaims their freedom and we see our three leads feeling free fleetingly. It gave me chills. After this moment, when the screen closes again – now you feel what at least I hadn't really noticed until then – that this aspect ratio works as a visual representation of how trapped these characters are. The screen closes in at a time that truly illustrates this and from then on the black sides feel as though they're kind of that-which-will-remain- forever-unreachable. The only time the screen expands again attests to this for it is a character's dream of the future.

Mommy is pitched in an ordinary world, but at extremes of emotion, but at the core there is always honesty in what it says and it's this that for me makes Dolan a great filmmaker. Dolan gets people and when you understand people enough to not just make a film in which you care about the characters, but to make a film where no matter the character, their experiences resonate: then, you have something magic.

"What does anyone want but to feel a little more free." I quoted at the start. Though Mommy wends through humour to ultimate heartbreak, for moments in it its characters are free and perhaps through this as we escape in its world, it allows us to feel a little more free also?

Wow! I was left with tears and emotional instability after watching this film. I mean this in the best way possible of course. I've never been so emotionally AND PHYSICALLY moved by a film. Mommy is so powerful and touching in so many ways because it captures a lot of problems, turmoils, and emotions that we all experience. In fact, it didn't feel like I was watching a film. I felt like I was living with these characters and experiencing everything they were going through. Laughing with the characters during their happiest moments, crying with the characters through their darkest times, and feeling frightened of what would happen next were all sentiments I felt throughout the film. This brings me to one of the most amazing aspects of the film-the acting.

The acting was absolutely superb! Everyone was terrific. The three main characters depicted by Anne Dorval, Suzanne, Clément, and Antoine Olivier Pilon were so engaging and compelling. They WERE their characters. I didn't feel like I was watching actors acting-it was so real! Bravo to all the whole cast!

The cinematography was breathtakingly beautiful. Xavier Dolan films are always a treat because they are all so visually stunning. Dolan captures many of the activities we do such as dancing with our family and friends, falling onto our beds, riding our bikes/longboards, and karaoking so majestically. Dolan is truly talented.

I was very excited to see Mommy for the longest time and I was not disappointed. I was transported to a different, magical, yet realistic world. I want to thank everyone involved in the production of Mommy. It was extremely powerful and so painfully relatable. I think about this film everyday and still get emotional. The soundtrack was lovely-I listen to it everyday and the songs evoke so much more meaning now. EVERYBODY, GO WATCH MOMMY!

I've now seen four Xavier Dolan films; "I Killed my Mother" was my first (his too ;), and I thought it was a much better film. Although there are great similarities in the characters' dynamics, the characters in "I Killed my Mother" were simply more believable, and that made their plight - and the story - more interesting.

"Steve" in this movie has such a weird mania: he seems to know when he's being super-anti-social but simply doesn't care. (Is it possible he's named after "Steve-O"?)

I was surprised, in "I Killed...," how unlikable Dolan made his own character, but that story - about two people who had absolutely nothing in common but were forced to love each other anyway - seemed like a much truer story, and that movie also had genuine emotional moments - particularly the line "I would die tomorrow" (if you've seen it, you know). Where that movie was emotional, this movie is merely cringeworthy.

I've seen 4 Dolan features so far (not in the order he made them), and this is the first one for me that didn't (a) feature Dolan himself in a staring roll, and (b) have a gay sub-plot in the story. Both of these were disappointing to me, although he does replace himself with a young actor who would be simply stunning, if he wasn't constantly mugging for the camera - which is still fine for the movie, since we see it as part of his mental disorder.

Having seen previous Dolan movies, I've come to believe he "widens" the screen for fantasy scenes - this is clearly shown the second time in "Mommy" that he widens the screen, but I mention this to suggest that the mid-movie "Wonderwall" montage, which others have suggested was showing progress, is actually a fantasy.

Speaking of screen shape - this movie may be square, but on a wide screen, it appears vertical. Obviously, Dolan was trying make us feel visually "trapped" in the story, the same as his characters. Like wiring theater seats for an electric shock, this technique does work, but whether it makes this a better "movie" is debatable. It's not a deal-killer, but I think it honestly makes the movie less-fun to watch, and what do we watch movies for, if not to have fun?

Final comments on the beginning and ending (not really spoilers): The "alternative Canadian law" thing in the opening titles seems completely unnecessary, as "Steve" was more than dangerous enough for involuntary psychiatric commitment with or without an alternate universe. And the ending! Well... it seemed inevitable through the whole movie that it would end this way, because it really didn't have anywhere else to go. Even the final shot: seems it's been the final shot in many other movies with a similar subject. MANY other movies.

So, not a bad art film, to be sure, but in my opinion, it's hardly Dolan's best movie, and certainly not his most accessible... I would NOT recommend it to anyone who's not already a fan.