CRITICS/QUOTES
Press reviews:
Globe and Mail: “A coming-of-age tale as ferociously raw as its teller -- the very young Xavier Dolan.”
Eye weekly: “while competitors may grumble over Dolan’s splashy arrival, even they must concede that Canadian cinema needs more newcomers with his brio.”
L’Express: “Xavier Dolan doesn’t show off. His talent is astonishing, never ostentatious. (…)”
Cahiers du cinéma: “A blend of humour, cruelty and keen observations of the day to day.”
Libération: “… there is a provocative ferociousness in this theatrical Oedipus complex bursting with hysterics and comedy.”
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BIO/FILMOGRAPHY
Director’s Biography
Born in Montreal in 1989, Dolan made his screen debut at the tender age of six in a series of pharmaceutical commercials and continued to appear steadily in both film and television. He caught everyone’s attention when his first film, J’ai Tué Ma Mère, (I Killed My Mother), premiered at the Cannes Film Festival, receiving an eight-minute standing ovation and winning every award it was nominated for. An overnight sensation, Dolan immediately became the darling of the press, not only because of his film’s outstanding success at the festival and the numerous distinctions it has received since (Oscar, César and Jutra nods), but because of an unexpected item in his biography : fresh out of school and turning down university to devote himself to film, Dolan was only twenty when his film was selected at Cannes, nineteen when he directed the picture and seventeen when he wrote the script.
The film is largely autobiographical, but Dolan is reluctant to qualify it as such : “I didn’t want to go the documentary-style, Tarnation route. It’s fiction, and I added a lot of elements to it to have a dramatic narrative.” Furthermore, he has repeatedly insisted that his film is not about a homosexual boy’s coming of age, akin to the Belgian film Ma vie en rose, but really about the fiercely unpredictable relationship between an adolescent and his mother (the marvelous Anne Dorval).
Director’s Filmography
J’ai Tué Ma Mère (2009)
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