I killed my
mother is a french language canadian film, released in 2009 directed by
canadien filmmaker, writer and actor Xavier Dolan. I admittedly considered
writing this review in French, but considering that most of my audience is english
speaking, and that the Canadian accent left me glued to the subtitles, I decided
to stick to my native tongue. The film is about a young 17 year old, living
with his mother in Montreal. His parents are divorced, and he never sees his
father. His relationship with his mother is not good, and when he is asked to
fill in a survey about his parents, he tells the teacher that his mother is
dead. Following this he is inspired to write an essay about his relationship
with his mother called “j’ai tué ma mere”.
The film
was written, directed and shot by Dolan, on a shoestring budget of only $800 000,
and what is even more shocking is the fact that Dolan was only 19 at the time.
For someone so young, Dolan handles the film with a sureness and a subtlety of
someone years his senior, and despite being made for such a low price, and
being a directorial debut, the film looks highly professional. The film can be
described as belonging to the new queer cinema movement, a group of films
written by gay writers and directed by gay directors, but which are not really
about being gay at all. Despite
being gay himself and clearly being a gay filmmaker, Dolan doesn’t let that
define him. The main focus of this film is the relationship between Hubert and
his mother.
In many ways
the film deals with the logical reasons why we should or shouldn’t like/love
our parents. Hubert says that he deeply loves his mother, and that if anyone
hurt her he would kill them, but that doesn’t stop Hubert from being abusive to
his mother, or from also hating her. What Dolan is essentially saying is that
although he loves his mother, like we all love our parents, he doesn’t like her
at all, and that the love he feels for her is a convention, rather than a true
feeling. The film deals with the reasons why we are often unable to connect
with our parents, why we often feel misunderstood or disconnected, and why as
teenagers we act out and start defying our parents.
It is
important to note that Hubert’s mother, despite doing her best is simply not a
good parent, she is selfish, insecure and unstable, and tries to understand her
son exclusively on her terms rather than his. Xavier Dolan has stated that the
film is at least partially autobiographical, and his mother’s inability to
understand him or his sexuality is somewhat central to this film. One of the
main reasons for the lack of function in their relationship is that his mother
doesn’t know about Hubert’s sexuality. Hubert doesn’t make any real attempt to
hide his sexuality, and throughout the film he has numerous affairs with
different men, the fact that his mother doesn’t know about who he really is
isn’t because he hasn’t told her, because in reality he shouldn’t have to, and
she should be in sync enough to devine it for herself. The fact that she
doesn’t know means that she is either lying to her son and to herself, or that
she doesn’t really know her son, as is likely the case, she hasn’t ever tried
to get to know her son, and she seems more interested in defending herself that
she is in doing what is best for him.
The film is
beautifully shot and fantastically acted, and was certainly an auspicious start
for Xavier Dolan who at the tender age of 25, already has 4 feature films under
his belt. What stands out in this film is the writing, and Dolan has created a
fantastic and visceral story that the vast majority of gay youths can relate
to. Rating: B+
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