Review: J'ai tué ma mère

The next film in this year's schedule was Canadian cinema part deux: the French language feature J'ai tué ma mère (I killed my mother).  Xavier Dolan produced, wrote, directed and starred in this film.  This is very convenient because you know who to blame if you don't like it.

This semi-autobiographical tale is about Xavier's relationship with his mother.  For this film, he takes on the name Hubert, and his mother is not played by his mother, but rather by Anne Dorval.  Hubert and his mother Chantale fight. A lot.  Drop dead scream fests.  In French.  Québécois French, but French nonetheless.  Hubert is mean, Chantale is mean, and it's hard to decide who's at fault, really.

One may choose to infer that the root of the problem is that Hubert has chosen not to divulge his homosexuality to his mother, though the film didn't directly state that.  Hubert's father isn't much help, as he ditched the family years prior, deciding that parenthood just wasn't for him.  Unable to deal with Hubert's rage herself, Chantale ships him off to a boarding school.

Along the way, Hubert strikes up a friendship with one of his public school teachers, Julie, and interacts with his main squeeze Antonin and his mother Hélène, who eventually outs Hubert in a chance encounter with Chantale.

Dorval gives a great performance as Chantale, especially in one scene when she rips the boarding school's director a new hole for suggesting that Hubert would benefit from a male influence in the home.  Dolan is predictably convincing in portraying himself on screen.  As a story, though, I found it a little frustrating watching these two people rip each other apart verbally for seemingly no reason whatsoever through most of the film.  Sure, perhaps that's how the relationship was, but it doesn't necessarily make compelling cinema.  My imdb rating: 5/10.