This post is to celebrate Halloween by watching what has now become a classic of recent years: «J’ai tué ma mère» (I Killed My Mother) by Canadian auteur Xavier Dolan.

In this film Dolan played the very eloquent Hubert, who is dating Antoine, a fellow art student. The conflicts with his mother get worse and worse and when he’s not complaining about her bad taste or her tacky interior decoration, she finds a way to upset him even more by sending him to a boarding school outside of Montréal. Antoine’s mother, whom she meets randomly at the solarium tells her about the relationship of their boys and she is not exactly pleased.

This is shot in an original framing style, with cheap looking sets and some home made video footage of the actor-director recording his thoughts on his mother and why he (symbolically) wants to kill her. The soundtrack is of course worth a closer look with songs like “Tell me what to Swallow” by Cristal Castle, a song called “Nuit Blanche” by Belgian pop-rock group Vive la fête and other more classical pieces by Canadian song-writers.

Dolan, who was only 20 at the time when «J’ai tué ma mère» came out, demonstrates a certain video-clip-aesthetic, which will later on become his signature style for example in «Lawrence Anyways» or his Cannes Jury Price «Mommy». Discovered in 2009 at Cannes’ “Un certain regard” his films competed several times for the Palme d’Or but haven’t been awarded with the highest price yet. I can’t wait to see more of his work and to all Dolan worshippers I can recommend his somewhat “early” biography by Laurent Beurdeley: “Xavier Dolan, l’indomptable“.

And here a trailer of «J’ai tué ma mère»