Elephant Song

Slow moving and drawn out but interesting story about love and betrayal. Good acting by Xavier Dolan.

When a psychiatrist mysteriously disappears after a session with a mentally disturbed young man, a colleague is brought in to coax answers out of the youth, which leads to mind games, trickery and emotional manipulation in this Canadian thriller. The film starts off well with a great sense of mystery in terms of what happened to the psychiatrist and what the young man is like; he is built up like Hannibal Lector in 'The Silence of the Lambs': a character with whom one has to be careful when talking to. Xavier Dolan (yes, the director of 'I Killed My Mother' and 'Laurence Anyways'!) is superb as the mysterious youth, "just because I'm crazy doesn't mean I'm stupid", while Bruce Greenwood is also solid as the colleague. The film is let down though by a humdrum solution to the mystery and while there is a small emotional wallop as one realises why Dolan has been institutionalised at the end, the final act does not resonate half as much as the opening act. Greenwood's home life is left hazy too; his daughter possibly has Down Syndrome, and he is living with a woman who he calls 'aunt', but is she his sister? Nothing is clear, including why his home life is even included. At its best and most focused though, 'Elephant Song' is a riveting portrait of two very intelligent individuals trying to one-up each other in conversation and manipulation with real tension in the air.

''Elephant Song'' is a rather unusual drama. Despite a rather predictable story, an unnecessarily twisted plot development and a few vapid side stories going nowhere with at best average actors and actresses, this movie is still recommendable and one of the better genre flicks of the past years.

This is due to two precise elements. First of all, the movie has a numbing, nostalgic and deject atmosphere that serves as intriguing guide line. The soundtrack, the settings and the most important characters all add to this. This movie has a soul and a universe that is perhaps a little bit antiquated but still emotionally intriguing.

The second and most important reason why this movie works so well is the outstanding acting performance by Xavier Dolan. He plays a fascinating character who tries to be so unpredictable that it becomes predictable, who pretends to be crazy and evil even though he knows that he is very sane and kind at heart and who ends up trying to be rational and honest even though he still is irrationally emotional and cleverly dishonest for one very precise reason. This character and this actor make an otherwise at best average or even slightly below average flick an above average psycho drama. Even though Xavier Dolan is essentially known as a young and promising French-Canadian director, I hope he will focus on his acting career as well since this is where he really shines.

If you are looking for an atmospheric and slow-paced psycho drama with a fascinating main character, this is one of the best films of its kind of the decade. If you are looking for a clever plot and a diversified film, you will though end up being disappointed. With a better script and a more skilled director, Xavier Dolan could be a realistic candidate for an Academy Award for Best Actor in the near future.

The story is set in 1966, but you would never know it. A psychiatric hospital has a missing staff member , and a shrink is interviewing a patient who may have had something to do with it. The young patient is about as disrespectful as someone can be, and he provokes the physician into slapping him. The doctor promptly puts his tail between his legs and begs forgiveness . This patient is so sarcastic and condesending that the interview is worthless anyway , other than to see him torment the doc in a meaningless way. SURE ! In the 60s a doctor never would have gotten to that point, He would have shut the patient up long before he talked to him like he was dirt. But if he had slapped him he certainly wouldn't have apologized, in a time when corporal punishment was routine, and if it wasnt they didn't believe kids anyway .

They should have done it more MAD MAN style, where they portrayed people acting the way they did, before lawsuits, tabloids social media had adults pushed around by children and the lunatics running the nut house, literally. I couldn't take the snottiness of the patient any longer and the staff cow towing to him, so couldn't finish it. It's a sad state of movie making where they show the professionals afraid of the underaged , crazy patients, but it is the state of the world today, not 1966.

Fine acting from a small cast. I think both Greenwood and Dolan put on Oscar winning performances but they've been overlooked.

It's a sad story and the interplay between psychiatrist and patient is mesmerising. Difficult to follow as I'm still unclear as to the exact relationship between Greenwood's character and the nurse. Some reviewers think that Carrie-Ann Moss plays Greenwood's wife but she's not. She's his sister and the little Down Syndrome girl is his niece.

An absolute must see if you're into psychological drama like me and I shall be looking out for Xavier Dolan's other films. He's a real star in the making.