Mom­my

Direc­tor Xavier Dolan’s Mom­my is not a dystopi­an film, but the one small tweak it makes to the present looms large, swing­ing in and out of focus like the Sword of Damo­cles hung with too much slack. The film begins with a series of title cards that intro­duce view­ers to an alter­nate Cana­da in which a con­tro­ver­sial new law has empow­ered par­ents to per­ma­nent­ly for­feit cus­tody of minors, insti­tu­tion­al­is­ing prob­lem chil­dren who’ve become too dif­fi­cult to raise.

How­ev­er cow­ard­ly and inhu­mane such a law might seem, Steve (Antoine-Olivi­er Pilon) is the fer­al kind of youth who makes it sound like a good idea. Per­formed with the unchecked aban­don pre­vi­ous­ly reserved for Lars von Tri­er hero­ines, Steve is a mother’s worst night­mare – not because he’s such a ter­ror, but because his destruc­tive mania (insuf­fi­cient­ly writ­ten off as ADHD) so obvi­ous­ly forms a pro­tec­tive shell around a ten­der heart, rac­ing with way­ward love. For a par­ent of some­one like that, it’s the hope that hurts the most.

The leg­is­la­tion intro­duced at the top of Dolan’s unfor­get­table new film – as blunt­ly stat­ed as it is quick­ly tucked away – may seem like a lazy and under­de­vel­oped screen­writ­ing crutch, but that small bit of world-build­ing lurks in every shad­ow of this 139-minute gaunt­let, chal­leng­ing Steve’s moth­er to give up. The sus­pense that the title cards instil for the audi­ence, who know that Die (Dolan main­stay Anne Dor­val) will even­tu­al­ly sur­ren­der her son, is no match for that which bur­dens the woman her­self, who is forced to con­sid­er that she could.

Die, of course, is no angel – her name is short for Diane, but she insists on keep­ing the ​“e” in there, lest any­one dare think this work­ing class sin­gle moth­er is eas­i­ly pitied or preyed upon. Brash and unfil­tered, Die is the kind of woman who opens her mouth even wider when you catch her chew­ing gum, and though it would be an under­state­ment to say that her rela­tion­ship with Steve is messy and prone to wild fluc­tu­a­tions, one thing is imme­di­ate­ly clear from the moment she retrieves her son from a juve­nile deten­tion cen­tre at the start of the film: Steve wasn’t adopted.

They share a rather large house on an unre­mark­able block in sub­ur­ban Que­bec, their shrill per­son­al­i­ties bal­loon­ing to fill the emp­ty space left by the death of Steve’s father three years pri­or. As Steve careens from one tantrum to the next, des­per­ate­ly try­ing to be all of the men who Die might be miss­ing from her life, their home hard­ens into a live grenade, and the only per­son capa­ble of hold­ing down the pin is Steve and Die’s shy, stut­ter­ing new neigh­bour, Kyla (Suzanne Clé­ment, anoth­er Dolan reg­u­lar). The three of them are able to alchemise some kind of ten­u­ous sta­bil­i­ty, but it can’t last.

Answer­ing for his much-dis­cussed deci­sion to shoot the film in a 1:1 aspect ratio (a per­fect square resem­bling an Insta­gram pho­to), Dolan has said that the claus­tro­pho­bic frame was intend­ed to keep his orna­men­tal­ism in check – some have accused his past work of being flam­boy­ant to a fault, and a crit­i­cism Mom­my resists by restor­ing a Drey­er-like atten­tion to the faces of his actors. But for an aes­thete like Dolan, every styl­is­tic obstruc­tion reg­is­ters its neg­a­tive dimen­sion, and what’s omit­ted from the pic­ture lands with the same impact as that which remains.

The aspect ratio isn’t ascetic, it’s just a dif­fer­ent shade of flam­boy­ance, and Dolan does such mag­i­cal­ly sim­ple things with it. Mom­my is so affect­ing in part because Dolan’s style has final­ly struck up a per­fect­ly flu­ent dia­logue with his char­ac­ters, the sat­u­rat­ed rich­ness of his melo­dra­ma blos­som­ing into a rare emo­tion­al puri­ty – his char­ac­ters have always been can­did, but here they feel gen­uine­ly raw.

This sub­lime har­mo­ny between sub­stance in style is under­scored by the film’s sound­track, which is stunt­ed some­time around the late ​’90s. Pre­emp­tive­ly tak­ing a page from Guardians of the Galaxy, Steve is hung up on a mix CD that his father had made before his death, and so the sound­track is dom­i­nat­ed throw­backs like Oasis, Count­ing Crows, and even Eif­fel 65. The ​“gim­mick”, like any part of a Dolan film that’s often described as such, returns our atten­tion to the root pow­er of his world: kitsch with­out irony is love. And love is some­thing that Dolan gets so right that it shines through every­thing else.

Cul­tur­al anachro­nisms are inher­ent­ly fun­ny, and it’s nat­ur­al to laugh with recog­ni­tion at the first chords of Dido’s ​‘White Flag.’ But Dolan push­es through that, forc­ing view­ers to hear the music from both sides, simul­ta­ne­ous­ly appre­ci­at­ing it for both its humour and its hon­esty. And it’s the same way with his char­ac­ters. ​“A moth­er doesn’t just wake up one day not lov­ing her son,” Die tells Steve towards the end of the film, the promise of her words made all the more dev­as­tat­ing by the con­flu­ence between how true they are, and how dis­lo­cat­ed they feel from the time when they might have made a difference.

It goes with­out say­ing that Dolan is the only per­son who could make this film, but much of its light­ning-in-a-bot­tle results from how he made it per­fect time, the cinema’s most tal­ent­ed wun­derkind since Orson Welles strad­dling the divide between pre­co­cious ado­les­cent and ful­ly grown up auteur. Broad­ly speak­ing, it may be true that Steve is a man­i­fes­ta­tion of Dolan’s wild excitabil­i­ty, Die his nascent respon­si­bil­i­ty and Kyla the super­ego try­ing to hold every­thing togeth­er, but what mat­ters is that Dolan is able to empathise with them all.

He inspires his actors to ram­page through the movie with inti­mate bril­liance, and he shapes their mate­r­i­al with the wis­dom of some­one who’s acute­ly aware of his ongo­ing mat­u­ra­tion, and the muta­bil­i­ty it entails. Yes, Dolan is per­verse­ly accom­plished for some­one so young, but with Mom­my, it feels like he’s just the right age.