Accepting the inaugural Jay Scott Award for his debut feature I Killed My Mother from the Toronto Film Critics Association last month, Xavier Dolan was less wunderkind than bashful kid.
His sincere appreciation at being recognized for a film he wrote, directed and starred in at the age that most kids are struggling with high school homework was palpable, although at this point, the 20-year-old Montreal native has had plenty of experience deflecting approbation: I Killed My Mother won three prizes at Cannes in 2009, and while it just missed the Best Foreign Language shortlist at the Oscars, it should figure heavily into this year’s Genie Awards.
In Dolan’s view, though, there’s plenty about the film — a loosely autobiographical comedy-drama about the difficult relationship between a troubled 17-year-old boy (the director) and his über-nudging mother (Anne Dorval) — that might be improved.
“It’s hard to look at it again,” laughed Dolan during an interview at last fall’s Toronto International Film Festival. “Some things in the film feel unbearable to me now. But at the same time, I’m always discovering new things that I hadn’t seen before that I like a lot.”
The good stuff comes in the extended arguments between Dolan and Dorval, which have a tetchy tête-à-tête tension.
“People often attribute the rhythms of a movie to the editing,” says Dolan. “But in this case, that rhythm is in the dialogue. It was on the page from the beginning. But of course dialogue isn’t everything — I wanted there to be little (visual) details to explain the things that words can’t.”
There’s a definite confidence to the filmmaking in I Killed My Mother, as static, long-take sequences are interspersed with more impressionistic montage.
“I love long takes and I wanted to use as many of them as possible, but I don’t think that a film has to stay with one style the whole time.”
In interviews, Dolan has made reference to producing his debut in something of a rush, which explains its often furious energy (and perhaps also a few of its lapses in dramatic or thematic continuity).
• I Killed My Mother opens Friday
