AFI Fest Review: Mommy

Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned, but even the fury of a woman scorned pales in comparison to the fury of a mother whose child is scorned.  There is nothing as ferocious as a mother's love.  It has no reason or rhyme; it simply is.  It's beautiful, mysterious, illogical, endless.  And it is the beating, bleeding, boisterous heart of Canadian wunderkind Xavier Dolan's latest, the appropriately titled Mommy, which is as vivid and electric a portrayal of the mother-child bond as I've ever seen.

In Mommy's Canada, parents have the option to turn over their children to hospitals if the children are too dangerous or problematic to keep at home.  This twist on the health care system is introduced via opening title cards, and the possibility looms large in our minds as we witness the film's highs and lows.  When violent fifteen year-old Steve (Antoine-Olivier Pilon) is returned to his mother Diane's (Anne Dorval) custody, it's obvious that the new law might become necessary in mending (and breaking) the familial bonds that suffer so much wear and tear.  The love between Diane and Steve is never in question, but it raises many.  Their relationship is volatile and impassioned, laced with suggestions of darker depths - they curse and scream at each other with the same vigor with which they dance and rally to each other's aid.  It's a thrillingly complicated dynamic.

The performances are absolutely stunning.  Though the film is carefully bounded by its unusual aspect ratio - 1:1, a perfect square - Dolan allows his actors to be boundless.  Pilon is all swirling energy looking for an outlet, with an elastic face and sudden jolts of physicality that fit such a wildcard character.  Dorval gives one of the finest performances of the year, finding every pocket of feeling and vulnerability that exist within Diane.  She is just as afraid of her son as she is of losing him.  As speech-impeded neighbor Kyla, Suzanne Clement (one of Dolan's regular collaborators) is lovely, understated, but also prone to moments of precise, booming articulation.  Mommy's characters inhabit their emotions fully, employing every part of their body and ounce of energy in the expression of their internal worlds.

The aspect ratio is perhaps Dolan's most genius maneuver in Mommy.  It effectively demonstrates how small and contained Diane's world is while Steve constantly weighs on her mind; in the opening scenes, it's likely to cause some consternation for viewers who are used to seeing more on screen.  It causes us to hone in on the details, just as Dolan's camera does, and creates iconic images that - within the bounds of the square - look like album covers, as we see the greatest hits and deepest cuts of a violent love, only fitting in a film that is so musically gratifying (and surprising).

Dolan consistently proves himself one of the most exciting young directors in the world, and with Mommy, he makes a convincing argument that we might as well drop "young" from that descriptor.  He is an absolute force to be reckoned with behind the camera, and his world is one I want to spend countless more hours in, especially as he continues to experiment with style and deliver such satisfying substance.