Tom à la ferme

This cinematic baby of director/writer/actor Xavier Dolan is a moderately successful suspense film that is prevented from being more successful by its desire to be strange and enigmatic rather than forthright about its intentions.

Dolan plays a young gay man who visits the family of his recently deceased lover to attend the funeral. There, he finds himself adored by the oblivious mother who didn't know her son was gay, and hated by the crazy, violent brother who hates that his sibling was gay and intends to keep that knowledge from his mother at all costs. This plays out mostly as you would expect, with an increasing sense of claustrophobic dread. Why Dolan's character doesn't just leave this potentially dangerous situation is adequately explained through various plot devices, some of them imposed on him by external circumstances, some of them arising from his own internalized motivations. Dolan gives a very good performance, but the actor who plays the abusive antagonist is poorly cast, not menacing or threatening enough to be convincing. And a late-act plot development involving a fake female love interest for the dead brother does more to derail the movie than heighten its suspense.

Still, those looking for an off-kilter watch will probably be satisfied. This movie reminded much in tone of last year's release "Strangers by the Lake," though that is a much better film than this one.

Grade: B+

This film succeeds in pulling off what "Stranger By The Lake" totally failed to do. The darkness draws you in and intrigues us, and the characters are brilliantly acted and engaging.

Some of the editing is slightly strange, or perhaps the narrative would be a better way to describe it, i.e. there are a couple of transitions between scenes where I found I was having to piece things together arbitrarily, in my opinion, meaning I had to concentrate hard. However I'd much rather this than everything being spelled out in children's building blocks as is the way with many American films.

This is one of the few "gay" films I've seen that had hardly anything superficial and stereotypical about it, and wasn't depressing to watch as a gay man.

Hats off to the guy who played the crazy brother: dark and scary, but the homoerotic tones and suppressed desires sound through his silence, creating a fascinating villain, again, something which the aforementioned other French-language gay thriller completely failed to do, managing only to be faintly embarrassing and ridiculous.

This film tells the story of a man, called Tom, who pays an unannounced visit to his late boyfriend's farm in a small town in Quebec. He meets the brother who is violent and widely feared by the whole town. Yet, Tom is attracted to danger and stays at the farm.

This story is really captivating. It has so many subtle clues as to what the psychologically disturbed characters are thinking, which explain their behaviour. It drives viewers to think deeply about the reasons for their seemingly inexplicable behaviour, which is engaging and thrilling. Tom is clearly very attracted to being abused, and his psychological state is portrayed vividly by the film. There are some really dangerous moments in the film, making it thrilling. I really enjoyed watching "Tom at the Farm", and I look forward to watching other films by the same director.

A young gay man from Montreal travels to rural Quebec to visit the family of his recently deceased partner and attend the funeral. The visit turns into a nightmare. The film is based on the play by Michel-Marc Bouchard who co-wrote the screenplay with director Xavier Dolan. Dolan also plays the main role.

Dolan uses powerful techniques to stir emotion in this bizarre thriller. He also gets great performances from the actors including himself.

The trouble is in trying to understand and empathize with the main character, Tom. He seems to have little or no survival instincts to take care of himself, sometimes even deliberately walking into further trouble.

This is made clear, maybe intentionally, in the second half of the film when Sarah, a friend from Montreal, enters the scene. Sarah at least shows the survival instincts clearly lacking in Tom. There are some hints as to why Tom stays in the dreadful situation but the inconsistencies in his actions cause too much confusion.

Dolan is a powerful artist with much promise at his young age. This was shown in "I Killed My Mother" and "Heartbeats". "Tom at the Farm" has potential but doesn't quite meet the level of the other two films. - dbamateurcritic.

Set in a lonely farm in Quebec, TOM A LA FERME concerns the inner life of the eponymous central character (Xavier Dolan) mourning the death of his lover. He goes to his lover's family's isolated farm for the funeral, and there encounters the mother (Lise Roy) and her other son (Pierre-Yves Cardinal), neither of whom were aware of the dead lover's sexuality.

The film concentrates on the gradual discovery by the family of their dead son's secret, and how it affects them. Francis is both horrified yet strangely affected; as the action unfolds, he develops an unnatural affection for Tom that is both sadistic and sexual. The mother seems to be unaware of what's happening around her, but perhaps she is just deliberately blinding herself to the truth as a means of self-protection. Tom finds himself imprisoned at the farm; even when his close acquaintance Sarah (Evelyne Brochu) comes to visit, he cannot contrive an effective escape.

TOM A LA FERME concentrates on the ways in which people conceal their private inclinations, even from their nearest and dearest, and the damage that actually causes them. This is especially true of Francis, who emerges from the film as a seriously disturbed character, masking his sexual inadequacies beneath a veil of strength. Yet the process of self-discovery for all the characters is an enabling one - so much so that when Tom finally escapes from the farm, he does not appear very happy to have done so. The film ends with a shot of him re-entering the city of Montreal, the lighted skyscrapers flashing by outside his car windows, with his face set in an expressionless gaze as he drives. It seems that 'freedom' for him is nothing more than a form of imprisonment; by extension, therefore, his imprisonment at the farm was an opportunity to discover some form of freedom.

Filmed on a series of bleak winter days in stark, washed-out colors, TOM A LA FERME is a searing psychological examination of sexualities and how they are often willfully concealed.