Matthias & Maxime

Matthias and Maxime have been friends since childhood. The first (Gabriel D'Almeida Freitas) is a handsome lawyer with an upward career and in a relationship with a woman, while the second (Xavier Dolan), lives with his recovering addicted mother (Anne Dorval) and is preparing a trip to spend at least two years in Australia. As a result of a bet, both must participate in a short film in which they kiss, a situation that will trigger questions in both.

Xavier Dolan addresses several issues in this film: the possibility of two men coming out of the closet after a relationship of years, the end of youth, the divergent paths that can separate two people, the relationship with their mothers (own and others) and affiliate responsibilities.

The process between the two protagonists is partly reminiscent of the films by Argentine Marco Berger, with arguments consisting of waiting for both to consume a sexual encounter after accumulating erotic tension throughout the film, only that the accumulation of tension (sexual and affective) is almost absent in Dolan's film, a process to which his ellipsis and the approach of the protagonists contribute.

The goodbye to youth is given by the noisy and festive scenes with his group of friends from different social backgrounds, in scenes that are too long that in general do not contribute to the dramatic development and provide some moment of somewhat faded humor.

The (always) conflictive relationship with the mother is a topic in Dolan's films: it also appears in I killed my mother and in Mommy and, in all three cases, with Anne Dorval in that role.

Unfortunately, in addition, all these planes do not finish combining and enhancing each other and some even become annoying from time to time due to their dispersion. Of course, the movie is well shot, with some slick images, some editing details, and an interesting soundtrack.

Matthias and Maxime is another example that shows that Dolan works better and achieves more powerful and effective stories when he operates the playful, as The Imaginary Loves and perhaps the best of his films, Tom at the Farm have shown.

Matthias (Matt) and Maxime (Max) have been best friends since early childhood. While they still share a common group of friends, their life journeys have diverged - Matt is a successful lawyer, while Max is a bartender. Max has guardianship of his mother (Dolan again with mother issues?) and may be trying to get away from her by passing the guardianship to his aunt and going to Australia for 3 years. As the date for Max's leaving nears, Matt's behavior becomes more erratic, though he is unable to properly express his feelings, even though Max offered to delay his departure and have them spend a last weekend together.

The submerged feelings theme reminds me of Happy Together. However, I don't quite buy that 7-year-old feelings for companionship are a precursor to what might be 30-year-old sexual feelings.

The large number of characters is a distraction, as it took energy to try to figure out which were of significance. The many sets / locations also seemed excessive for the story. Dolan may have gotten a bigger budget, but it the film could do with some tightening.

What struck my most about this film was that, just twenty minutes in, I got the feeling that I was watching a totally new kind of film. It's different from anything else. You don't notice it at first though. It follows the same sorts of conventions as other films, but at a certain moment I realized it had a completely unique tone to it which I personally had never seen before.

I don't know if it was deliberate. I don't know if it's something that's existed in other films, but it's certainly something I don't recall having ever seen myself. It almost feels like what some would call realism, but it's not. And since it's not quite that, it ends up being something completely different. It's subtle at first, but it never lets up. The wonderful camerawork only adds to it. Recommend.

As someone who has just finished watching all of Xavier Dolan´s films, I can say this movie has the same three characteristics as all (or most) of his other work: complicated relationships and identity as a theme, an awesome soundtrack, and dialogues where silences and what is left unsaid are just as important as words. This is good or bad, depending on whether you were expecting his work to have evolved after a decade.

Though it doesn't stray too far from Xavier Dolan's usual themes of questions of identity and sexuality, 'Matthias & Maxime' displays growth that comes from the maturity that resulted the movie as one of Dolan's most engaging and modest film in years.