MOMMY: A Melodrama That Shouldn’t Work But Does

I was having a conversation recently with a friend who complained about how he gets annoyed when he sees child celebrities, as “they’ve already achieved more in life than I ever will and they are younger than me!” As a recent university graduate, without a firm footing into the grown-up world of work, I’m increasingly empathising with this statement, whilst also increasingly acknowledging how ridiculous it is. Why should I be bothered that people who are more talented than me are going places, just because they are younger? I soon realised the reason why – child celebrities are forced into the spotlight and given a fully-formed image, whereas nobody in real life even knows what they want to be at a young age because they are far too busy exploring the concept of their own identity.

As a child actor and prolific voice dubber (he voiced Ron Weasley in the French dubs of the Harry Potter franchise), Xavier Dolan achieved more in life than most of us ever will and this was before he took up directing. Unlike other child celebrities, he didn’t come out in the spotlight fully formed and has spent the last few years on the art-house circuit releasing movies with increasing ambition, not fully discovering the type of filmmaker he is, but rather trying out a bit of everything and seeing what style sticks. Despite not being fully formed, we should still feel jealous of his early promise – his debut feature premiered at the Cannes film festival and he had only just turned 20. Over the course of four previous features, Dolan tried to explore his own identity, with features that were either autobiographical, or trying out different styles to find his “voice”.

A young director peaking early

When Mommy, his fifth feature, premiered at Cannes in May 2014 he had only recently turned 25; in comparison, Orson Welles, the go-to reference for directors who hit their stride at a young age, was 26 when Citizen Kane, his debut feature, was released. Nobody can ever be the director Welles was, nor can any director come out of the gate with a fully realised vision for their debut at such a young age; but the fact that Dolan has been honing his craft and finding his voice for the last six years has helped him make a movie that achieves “modern masterpiece” status at a younger age than Welles.

I hate to evoke one of the greatest directors of all time when walking about any new filmmaker, especially when the similarities end there; Welles made movies that were self-conscious masterpieces, whereas Dolan takes melodramatic narratives and makes them palatable for a more cynical generation. The genuine affection he has for his characters and his strive to experiment with his visuals are what separate him from being a director of mere trash cinema – or worse still, the director of a feature-length soap opera.

Dolan isn’t afraid to mix genres; with Mommy, he pulls off the near impossible tightrope walk of balancing melodrama with social realism, all of which is buried under a quasi-science fiction concept. At the start of the movie, title cards inform us that the Canadian government have passed a law that allows parents to have the rights to institutionalise their children with no say from the courts, with little chance of them being rehabilitated at these more restrictive facilities.

We are introduced to Dianne (Anne Dorval), the mommy of the title, in the midst of a car crash on the way to a meeting with the young offenders institute that houses her son Steve (Antoine-Olivier Pilon). After setting fire to the cafeteria and seriously injuring a student, she is given the ultimatum that she either houses him in a more restrictive facility, or she takes him home with her to take care of her on her own; something easier said than done due to being a single widow who works full-time. She takes him home and Steve’s ADHD causes numerous problems – he is violent, loud and obnoxious and makes no attempts to work well with others.

So, what specifically separates Mommy from being a feature-length soap opera? Firstly, the movie is shot in the 1:1 aspect ratio, the aspect ratio most of us are used to seeing on Instagram videos. Instead of being a pretentious experiment from a young, social-media savvy auteur to see if the aspect ratio is cinematically palatable, it works because the narrowness of the screen forces us directly into the lives of these characters. The focus is directly on the actors here, meaning that Dolan’s experiment succeeds; he has only used such an unusual visual element in order to get us to directly focus on the performances, to the point that fairly soon into the movie it becomes unnoticeable because of how much you are invested in the characters and the story.

By making the screen narrower, he’s forcing you to look deeply into the characters lives and ignore the wider world he has created. Dolan truly is an “actors director”, as he seems to only ever use visual techniques if they compliment the performances the actors give. When the aspect ratio does change, as it does twice in the movie, it provokes one of the most uplifting movie moments in recent memory; how many other directors use their innovative visuals as a way of provoking a deeper emotional reaction to the story, as opposed to mere window dressing to make their movie stand out?

Performances that elevate it past sheer melodrama

Now to talk about the performances. As the put-upon Mommy, Anne Dorval delivers one of the best performances of the year out of material that is pure melodrama. She gives it an uplift that ensures you take the emotional roller coaster of a story completely seriously, as she never plays the role with the cynical detachment most modern actors do when faced with anything in the slightest bit melodramatic. She grounds all the heightened emotions in reality, even when many scenes in the early stages consist of screaming matches between her and her son. With the showier role, Antoine-Olivier Pilon has the difficult task of grounding his character in reality, whilst also making him likeable to the audience – even with a transcendent emotional character arc, this is still easier said than done due to violent outbursts with his mother and abusive outbursts to pretty much everybody else. It is testament to both the inner vulnerability of the performance and Dolan’s screenplay that this never becomes a problem.

Completing the trifecta of emotionally involving performances is Suzanne Clement, playing Dianne’s neighbour who slowly becomes a friend and an integral part of both characters lives. In an unusual move, she is essentially the audience surrogate and reacts to Dianne and Steve’s home life like most people would (her restrained reaction to Steve grabbing his mothers breasts whilst lip synching to Celine Dion is priceless) – yet she isn’t introduced until far later in the movie, after we’ve been exposed to both characters at their most emotionally hysterical. In many ways, she has the most difficult role: she is the character most grounded in reality and has to counteract with both other performances, whilst revealing deeper layers to her own character at the same time. Every actor pulls their role off with aplomb and I am confused, watching it in the middle of the year, as to why it didn’t make a big splash during Oscar time.

One of the things I like about Mommy (and about Xavier Dolan as a director), is the rejection of anything that could be considered cool. Sure, he uses eye-catching technical tricks, but only as a method of getting audiences to engage with a melodrama, that least-cool of genres. He manages to use pop music in his scenes that perfectly compliments the action in a way that should rank him alongside every great director from Scorsese to Tarantino; yet here, the music he uses are mediocre ballads from Dido and Oasis, that are rendered uplifting due to how he utilises them. The reasoning for the soundtrack is that all the songs featured were on a road trip mixtape from Steve’s childhood – yet even this element of context doesn’t prepare you for hearing overplayed songs in a new light and finally understanding why they were popular in the first place.

Conclusion

Nothing in Mommy should work – it is a modern melodrama in an unsightly aspect ratio, from a director who is surely too young to fully know what he’s doing. The fact that it not only works, but is one of the best movies of the year, is conclusive proof that Xavier Dolan has joined the top tier of directors, who now has found his voice in such a manner it gives him the artistic rights to do whatever he wants. At 26 years old, he has achieved more than we ever will – but if a director this young can make a masterpiece, then it gives me hope for the future of cinema and the increasingly youthful armies of budding filmmakers looking to make a name for themselves.

Have you seen Mommy and do you think it was overlooked at awards season? Also, what movies were you late to discovering and left confused as to why nobody has been talking about them?

Mommy has basically been out forever in the UK, US and all major international territories. All the release dates are here, with the film now being out on DVD/Blu-Ray in most countries.

(top image source: Les Films Seville)