Xavier Dolan: ​‘I’ve nev­er expe­ri­enced love as some­thing calm and tender’

Mom­my is Xavier Dolan’s fifth fea­ture film (fol­low­ing I Killed My Moth­er, Heart­beats, Lau­rence Any­ways and Tom at the Farm) and is released in the UK on his 26^th birth­day. Set with­in a claus­tro­pho­bic 1:1 frame, it charts the some­times joy­ful, some­time abu­sive rela­tion­ship between a moth­er and her wild teenage son. Con­sis­tent Cannes recog­ni­tion has not neu­tralised Dolan’s obses­sion with raw and painful emo­tions. The Québé­cois auteur spoke to LWLies last Octo­ber after just get­ting off a plane about the per­son­al feel­ings of rage and unre­quit­ed love that seep into his films and make them so passionate.

LWLies: There’s a lot of love in all of your films but also a lot of spite. For you, what’s the con­nec­tion between those two emotions?

Dolan: A lot of love and a lot of what?

Spite.

What’s ​‘spite’? How do you write that?

S‑P-I-T‑E. It’s like cattiness.

I didn’t know that. Sorry.

That’s okay. I’ll put it anoth­er way. There’s a lot of love but char­ac­ters probe each other’s weak points. It’s not just nur­tur­ing love.

There’s attack in there. It’s aggres­sive love.

Can you explain how you’ve come to this vision of love as being aggressive?

I’ve almost nev­er expe­ri­enced love as some­thing that was real­ly calm and ten­der and peace­ful and beau­ti­ful. It’s always been intense and emo­tion­al and aggres­sive – maybe even abu­sive. It’s always been these impos­si­ble sto­ries of unre­quit­ed feel­ings and chas­ing peo­ple for years, and I’m only 25 so my con­cep­tion of love is very dra­mat­i­cal. I think that sort of love is also very cin­e­mat­ic. We could sit in front of peo­ple calm­ly – and I don’t want to say bor­ing­ly because that would be con­temp­tu­ous – lov­ing each oth­er with­out any form of prob­lem­at­ic for two hours but what would be the movie? That’s part of the answer but I don’t know. I’ve nev­er asked myself the question.

That’s a good answer espe­cial­ly as you’re jet-lagged.

I am, com­plete­ly, and I didn’t get to sleep. Nor­mal­ly I always sleep. It didn’t work this time. I had all my sleep­ing pills. It didn’t work. Not one minute. It’s a night flight. You’re sup­posed to sleep so that when you wake up in anoth­er coun­try you’re like, ​‘Oh my god! It’s like I just had a sol­id night of sleep!’ Any­way, it didn’t work.

So are you in sur­vival mode now?

Sort of and I’m very wor­ried about the answers that I’m devis­ing. Eng­lish is not my first lan­guage so when­ev­er I’m tired it’s the worst because I can’t find the words, let’s say the cool words that I’d be using in French. Or not cool but the right words and I’m always afraid that peo­ple will get it wrong when I speak in Eng­lish and espe­cial­ly when I’m tired. So hope­ful­ly you won’t tell.

I can’t tell. Also, it’s inter­est­ing to speak to peo­ple when their social­ly con­struct­ed bar­ri­ers aren’t up. Maybe you won’t sound as cool as you would like to but maybe you’ll be more raw so that could be cool in a dif­fer­ent way.

I’m always rather raw. It’s been a problem.

Yeah?!

Peo­ple have mis­in­ter­pret­ed that raw­ness in the past. I’m rather hon­est. I don’t bull­shit.
Do you mean per­son­al­ly or in your work or do you mean both?
In inter­views and in pub­lic. I’ve nev­er real­ly been into per­form­ing. I was always myself and I guess myself is some­thing that can irri­tate peo­ple or irk them.

I think that goes for all of us though.

It’s true. The only prob­lem is that… no, okay, what­ev­er. I don’t want to go there.
Fair enough. But this neat­ly goes back to one of the themes of Mom­my because it has two peo­ple liv­ing togeth­er wind­ing each oth­er up and irri­tat­ing each oth­er all the time.

Would you say you iden­ti­fy more with Steve or with Diane?

That’s a tough one. I don’t know. I’ve writ­ten both char­ac­ters so of course I iden­ti­fy to them. Well, I under­stand Steve’s rage and vio­lence. I have that vio­lence in me and I have that rage in me so I under­stand that. But he’s also men­tal­ly ill. He’s men­tal­ly ill. I don’t think I’m men­tal­ly ill so that is where my iden­ti­fi­ca­tion stops. I would tend to say that I relate more to Diane yet she’s a mum, she’s 45. We have very few things in com­mon and but then we have every­thing in com­mon. I just feel for her. I under­stand. I just, I do.

You took a lot of pride in dress­ing her too. Who and what inspired her incred­i­ble wardrobe?

There’s a lot of of Julia Roberts in Erin Brock­ovich. But then Erin Brock­ovich is very sexy. Die dress­es up like a teenage girl and Anne Dor­val doesn’t have Julia Roberts’ breasts so it takes us on anoth­er lead, I guess. There weren’t that many influ­ences apart from Erin Brock­ovich. It was most­ly the 2000s. You know there was a fash­ion faux pas that last­ed for, like, nine years between 1999 and 2008. I love to think about Die as some­one who want­ed to be sexy but didn’t have the mon­ey to change her wardrobe for quite a bit so we’re in 2015 but all she’s wear­ing is 2001, 2002, 2003s, the pat­terns that are very asso­ci­at­ed with the turn of the cen­tu­ry, the mil­le­ni­um that is.

You said that she’s not that sexy but the way that she’s shot and maybe she doesn’t have the boobs but she has the hair…

Oh she has many oth­er things. I love what she’s wear­ing. I love her style. This is not a game for me. I’m not like, ​‘Oh, that’s fun­ny’. I’m think­ing that if there’s no way that her char­ac­ter would think ​‘that’s pret­ty’ or ​‘that’s sexy’ for real then she’s not going to wear it.

You men­tioned that you’ve felt rage from a young age. Have you iden­ti­fied the tar­gets or the cause of your rage?

No. If I had I wouldn’t be talk­ing about it. I guess I’m talk­ing about it because I’m look­ing for answers. I think I have those answers but they’re too easy and not sat­is­fy­ing so I keep dig­ging. I had that vio­lence in me when I was, like, five. I would fight in the school­yard dur­ing recess and beat the shit out of oth­er kids for no rea­son at all.

So you were a lit­tle terror?

I was. I was awful. It makes me extreme­ly uncom­fort­able to think about it.

Maybe this is too cliched and neat for you but do you think that when you start­ed mak­ing films it dimin­ished your rage?

Of course. It’s not cliché. I mean those big clich­es are called clich­es because those big clich­es come from what’s true. I think we can all say, empir­i­cal­ly speak­ing, that ways of express­ing your­self have always chan­neled vio­lence or inner prob­lems. Can we agree on that? Cer­tain­ly. So that’s not a cliché. It’s true. No, I’m lucky and priv­i­leged to have found that lux­u­ri­ous hob­by and pas­sion that cin­e­ma is because that’s how I got to evac­u­ate my own vio­lence while Steve doesn’t have any­thing to evac­u­ate his.

Down­load the Mom­my issue of LWLies Weekly

I read that you were already say­ing you were a screen­writer at the age of 15. How ear­ly did you start?

I start­ed writ­ing scripts when I was 11, 12, 13, maybe.

Do they still exist?

Yeah.

Are you going to do any­thing with them?

They are all on flop­py disc so I’d have to bring them to the spe­cial­ty store and have them trans­ferred onto USB or DVD or what­ev­er. Old Microsoft Word.

Have you any inter­est in doing that or are you all about the future?

I don’t know that there would be any­thing suit­able for actu­al con­sid­er­a­tion but it could be fun­ny. I remem­ber quite well, actu­al­ly, what might be on those discs.

Care to share?

Super­hero films. Back then there had only been one X‑Men movie and I think I had a mix of mutants and guardian angels who were insert­ed into soci­ety to pro­tect peo­ple. It was prob­a­bly ridicu­lous but it was one of the things that I had been work­ing on.

As you men­tioned, you’re 25 and you’ve made five films and you trav­el the world with your films and you go to film fes­ti­vals and you have an inter­na­tion­al stage. Do you imag­ine that life is always going to be this way? That you’re always going to be so prolific?

I imag­ine I’m always going to be that pro­lif­ic but will the response always be like that? Will I always have the priv­i­lege of show­cas­ing my work in inter­na­tion­al fes­ti­vals? Will I always have the medi­at­ic atten­tion and scruti­ny in a pos­i­tive way? That seems rather unfath­omable. I can’t see that. How can I be sure of that? And that’s some­thing I’m think­ing about. I’m think­ing, ​‘Wow, the response to Mom­my has been great and it’s been so sat­is­fy­ing and reward­ing and it’s made us so hap­py’ but I can’t afford to think that it’s going to be like that for every movie and I’m afraid that peo­ple may resent me for not doing movies that… because I know that Mom­my has touched peo­ple a lot but I can’t tell that sto­ry over and over again. I’ve done it now so I feel like they’re going to be dis­ap­point­ed with the next one because it’s not going to be as emo­tion­al­ly engaging.

What is the next one going to be?

It’s a movie called The Death and Life of John F Dono­van. It’s a movie on movies, a sort of take on mod­ern show busi­ness and the hard­ships of fame, most­ly how fam­i­ly deals with the fame of their loved ones, how mums deals with the fame of their sons. Should I say it’s mod­ern take on show busi­ness a take on mod­ern show business?

It works either way.

It doesn’t.

I’d go mod­ern take on show business.

It’s a take on mod­ern show busi­ness, not a mod­ern take on show business.

Well, you have this pre­ci­sion that I think I don’t have. I hear the same thing with the words just switched around.

But it’s not the same thing.

Okay, you’re right.

I don’t know what my take will feel like and look like and be like but I know it’s on mod­ern show business.

Your films always feel like they couldn’t be made by any­one else. They’re very emo­tion­al but there’s atten­tion to detail and a style and style of speak­ing and the inter­est in queer rela­tion­ships. Does it draw peo­ple to you like a flare up into the sky for those with the same inter­ests as you?

That’s tricky. It would be very pre­ten­tious for me to think of my work as that but I do receive an unfath­omable amount of mes­sages and poems and let­ters. I don’t mean from actors or peo­ple who want to work with me. It’s peo­ple who want to tell me ​‘thank you for this’ ​‘thank you for that’. It’s extreme­ly touch­ing. I do think that these movies are impor­tant to some peo­ple for rea­sons that we don’t nec­es­sar­i­ly under­stand from a cin­e­mat­ic point of view. I don’t think it has noth­ing to do with the cin­e­mat­ic val­ue of these movies but it has more to do with their emo­tion­al val­ue and that’s to be defined by every sin­gle indi­vid­ual who’s watch­ing these films with their own pri­vate lives and their own mem­o­ries. I don’t even know how respon­si­ble I am for the fact that they like the films and that they actu­al­ly reach out after­wards but I do appre­ci­ate the fact that they reach out to me. I don’t know if that answers your ques­tion at all.

It does. What do you love about movies?

Free­dom. Whether it’s the free­dom that emanates from them or whether it’s the free­dom that they give me, they give me free­dom any­way. You watch a film or you make one and it means some­thing in the moment that you’re either watch­ing it or mak­ing it.

Does it have an affect after­wards or is it a self-con­tained experience?

No, it has to affect after­wards. It affects me in every prob­a­ble way. I also think that a movie should have you grow as an artist and as a human being in pro­por­tion­ate ways, equal­ly as a human being and as an artist. Once I’m done with a movie – I don’t know, am I ever real­ly done with a movie? For me, the movie’s been done since April but we’re in Octo­ber and I’m talk­ing about it. The movies grow in me and with me way after they’re fin­ished so yeah, they change me. They keep. Their spell still works on me, after months I’m still think­ing about them and under­stand­ing more things about me.

This is inter­est­ing thing about inter­views because even though some­times it’s exhaust­ing and there are a lot of them, every once in awhile, one con­ver­sa­tion with a jour­nal­ist or some­one who is just talk­ing about the movie will have you think about things that you would have nev­er thought about. You do realise that the ques­tions you’re ask­ing me, I don’t have the answers already? Some­times I have to make them up because I’ve nev­er asked myself those ques­tions except, obvi­ous­ly, the usu­al ques­tions like, ​‘Why are you obsessed with mums?’ and ​‘Why did you shoot in the square for­mat?’ and ​‘Where did you have the idea for that movie?’ which are – by the way – ques­tions I’ve not heard today so that’s great.

Apart from that, when you have to devise an answer and you’ve nev­er thought about it, it’s an inter­est­ing exer­cise. In the way that they force me to devel­op some the­o­ret­i­cal think­ing the movies have an impact on my life way after they’re done. And they have an impact on my life too when I walk into a the­atre to present the movie in a small vil­lage in Ger­many and every­body is cry­ing and they’re ask­ing ques­tions and those are bril­liant ques­tions so this has an impact on me. Many things, yeah. Movies are for­ev­er. It’s like a paint­ing done thou­sands of years ago, still there.