Interview with Xavier Dolan | Mommy, ten years later

Friday evening at the Outremont Theater, during the anniversary screening of Mommy in the presence of Xavier Dolan and his team, the spectators applauded wildly when the character of Steve (Antoine Olivier Pilon) seemed to widen the frame of the screen with his hands.

I thought of Herby Moreau. “You can’t miss this,” he told me in May 2014, talking about the official screening of Mommy at the Cannes Film Festival, to which I was not invited. I had seen the film the day before, at a press screening. The journalists also applauded, with surprise and delight, at the moment when the image format changed from a stifling square to a rectangle full of hope.

“Do you have a suit?” A bow tie? Black shoes? I know someone who was turned away because he had brown shoes,” said the providential Herby, handing me his precious ticket. Thanks to his generosity, I was able to attend the screening that same evening at the Palais des Festivals. And it was memorable. Young spectators shouted “La Palme!” » while Xavier Dolan, moved to tears, embraced his parents and his actresses, Anne Dorval and Suzanne Clément.

Like the day before, there was a round of applause when the frame changed from 1:1 to 1:85 format and Steve, on his longboard, spread his arms to the sound of Wonder wall of Oasis. The ovation during the credits, of remarkable intensity, lasted 13 minutes (I calculated it myself because it was so unusual). Part of the press, French in particular, campaigned for Mommy wins the Palme d’Or. He received the Jury Prize, chaired by filmmaker Jane Campion, tied with Goodbye to language by Jean-Luc Godard.

“Everything went beyond comprehension: with this unique excess of which the Festival is sometimes the theater, this way of inventing sacred moments without ever giving in on cinema, Xavier and Mommy were the event of Cannes 2014″, writes the big man of the Cannes Festival, Thierry Frémaux, in the preface to the splendid book of photos by Shayne Laverdière, A friendship on filmwhich Xavier Dolan has just published.

Did the filmmaker, who was then 25 years old, anticipate this reaction from the public? “No,” he told me in an interview. It’s a moment that I had imagined would be great and powerful, but you never know what will impact people and move them. We have intentions, desires, but we never know. »

Antoine Olivier Pilon was only 15 years old when he filmed Mommy. “It represents something,” Dolan told me, flipping through the pages of the book. He is a fallen angel, with this cherubic face who is suddenly capable of rebelling. Jane Campion speaks of him in her preface as a strangely sexy child. Even if we don’t like to say that kind of thing, Antoine already exuded that charisma. »

Pilon, who carries a large part of the film on his shoulders, was as comfortable in scenes of violent crises as in comic repartee, underlines Xavier Dolan. Disarmingly natural, perfectly uninhibited. However, the young actor arrived in a universe that Dolan had shaped for four films already, notably in the company of his two favorite actresses.

“When I work with someone like Anne or Suzanne, and we have a history together, the pleasure is to go elsewhere, to change,” he says. To laugh and walk differently. Often, Anne would tell me while we were filming Mommy : ‟No, that looks more like I killed my mother ; we’re not there, we’re using the wrong tone.” By turning The night Laurier Gaudreault woke up also, we sometimes said to ourselves that it was too much Mommy. »

These days, Dolan is presenting special screenings of Mommysome of which were on 35mm film for the first time. “Beyond 35mm, I realize that there are young people who tell me that they were 4 years old when the film came out,” Dolan told me, grimacing. It’s a little painful considering the passage of time, but there is a generation of moviegoers who have either never seen it or never seen it on the big screen. » This is why I bought tickets for my 18 and 20 year old sons.

Dolan first had the idea for this book, inspired by the photos of his friend Shayne Laverdière. He was invited to chair the jury of the Un Certain Regard section at the Cannes Film Festival, which coincided with the tenth anniversary of Mommy. He then suggested to his French distributor mk2 to co-publish this beautiful book on the behind-the-scenes shooting of the film and behind the scenes of its exceptional reception at Cannes. The last photo in the book is that of Dolan’s computer screen, on which we can read the “anthology speech” (dixit Thierry Frémaux) that he delivered a few hours later, at the time of the unveiling of the prize list .

“There are moments of doubt, secrets in the ears, silences, moments of being the star on the floor with Antoine Olivier Pilon. I would never have made a photo book about my film. It’s not interesting enough. But the compositions, Shayne’s eye for detail, the stories he tells: it’s his vision. These are the photographic qualities I wanted to celebrate. »

What Xavier Dolan remembers from this adventure, ten years later, is not the prizes at Cannes, the Césars or the Jutras, but what happened away from the cameras. “These are moments, unsuspected intrigues, dynamics that took place, particularly on the film set, that the film does not necessarily allow us to envisage. »

Like this evening of strong emotions that I experienced on the balcony of the Théâtre Lumière in Cannes.

Mommy is presented on November 5 and 20 at the Cinémathèque québécoise, in the presence of Xavier Dolan, and on November 9 at the Cinéma Beaubien. Several presentations also take place throughout Quebec.