Mommy
A widowed Quebec mother brings her volatile teenage son home from institutional care and, with a withdrawn neighbour's help, tries to build a life with him.
Mommy is a tremendously acted, heartfelt, formally inventive movie.
Mommy follows Diane, a widowed working-class mother in suburban Quebec, who takes her teenage son Steve home after he is discharged from a residential facility. Steve is charming and violent by turns, and Diane has little money and few allies. A quiet, withdrawn neighbour, Kyla, drifts into their lives and begins to tutor the boy, and for a while the three of them steady one another.
Serious critics noted the film's unusual 1:1 aspect ratio, a near-square frame that holds the characters in a tight, almost confining box; at two moments of release the image widens to a conventional width. Dolan drew praise for the raw performances of Anne Dorval and Antoine-Olivier Pilon, though some reviewers found the emotional pitch relentless.
For a psychodynamic clinician, the film stages the strain of a love that cannot contain what it holds. Diane's devotion is real, yet her own volatility mirrors her son's, and hope keeps outrunning what either can sustain. The widening frame marks the fragile intervals when connection feels possible, and the story stays honest about the limits of care when care alone is not enough.
Director
Xavier Dolan
Xavier Dolan is a French Canadian filmmaker from Quebec who began directing at nineteen, with I Killed My Mother in 2009. His films return often to mothers and sons, to love tangled with volatility, and to questions of identity and belonging. The most clinically useful of these is Mommy (2014), which follows a widowed mother and her impulsive teenage son; it shared the Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival. He also acts and writes.
Details
- 2014
- 138 min
- Canada
- French
- Film
- Cannes Jury Prize 2014 won (shared with Jean-Luc Godard's Goodbye to Language)