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Critics Consensus: Passionate and powerfully acted, Laurence Anyways sometimes strains to achieve its narrative ambitions (and fill its three-hour running time), but ultimately succeeds.
Critic Consensus: Passionate and powerfully acted, Laurence Anyways sometimes strains to achieve its narrative ambitions (and fill its three-hour running time), but ultimately succeeds.
All Critics (61) | Top Critics (19) | Fresh (51) | Rotten (10) | DVD (1)
"Laurence Anyways" is a formidable display of French Canadian director Xavier Dolan's prodigious talents, but also a case study of a young talent still finding his way to greatness.He'll get there one day, soon, but this film doesn't quite do it.
Lushly romantic and daringly original.
It's all too much, really, including its 21/2-hour-plus running time. But it's also engrossing, an ultimately tender story of a transsexual's transformation over 10 years and its effect on him and the people around him.
At nearly three hours, it's by turns an extraordinary and exhausting work.
Poupaud's quiet moments convey a lofty, poignant introspection, and Clément erupts with grand, if scattershot, furies.
At nearly three hours, it's entirely too long, needlessly padded out with an intrusive interview-framing device.
A beautiful gateau of a film.
Dolan's latest feature, the French language Laurence Anyways, proves this is a filmmaker able to breathe cinematic invention and beauty into every frame.
A stylish and immodest transgender melodrama.
Too much music. Too much colour. Too much movie. But a good movie.
Suzanne Clement gives one of those legendary, no-holds-barred performances that announces the arrival of a sensational new screen presence.
...a symphony of sound and image, an epic account of a dynamic and complicated relationship, and one of the most powerful and affecting love stories I've seen on film in quite some time.
Dolan's first misstep in his so far promising career, and it is true that he had shown before a penchant for over-stylization but now he seems to think he is fabulous enough to come up with this incredibly pretentious, self-indulgent, artificial and exasperating exercise of style over substance.
Super Reviewer
Even though "Laurence Anyways," is about the title character(Melvil Poupaud), a transgender teacher and poet, the movie is in reality not so much concerned about gender. Rather, it is about transformation in general, as it charts ten years in the life of her and her long time girlfriend Fred(Suzanne Clement), a production assistant for movies, during the 1990's while charting the evolution of their ever changing relationship. As such, writer-director Xavier Dolan shows marked improvement in his visual presentation with several very memorable images. For example, the first time Laurence walks through a school hallway in women's clothes has to be one of the bravest things a character has ever done in a movie. At the same time, I'm not quite sure "Laurence Anyways" warrants its epic length, just as much as Dolan seems to reference the 80's more than the 90's.(Look, I may not know fashion or hairstyling but I do know a 1981 Duran Duran song when I hear one.)
For someone to direct a film such as this at such a tender age is remarkable. Xavier Dolan has the potential to become one of the greatest Canadian directors of all time. I saw this version which I believe is the theatrical version..I missed the longer one released by the Film Festival and I hope I didn't miss out on more intriguing looks at Laurence Alia and his struggles in world where the thinking is still a little backward. Fantastic jobs by the leads. Their relationship sizzles.
One of my favourites at this year's Toronto International Film Festival, "Laurence Anyways" is a gritty drama showcasing what it means to be constricted by societal "norms" of being a certain gender. Xavier Dolan exercises his mind, coming up with some of the most visually captivating and stylized sequences which when paired with electropop beats, produce some of the most stimulating scenes. There is style, but there is substance too. The leads, Melvil Poupaud and Suzanne Clement, are riveting to watch as they interact and feed off each other's energy. âLaurence Anywaysâ? is polarizing in both its content and its product but it succeeds more than it sinks. I haven't seen any of Dolanâ(TM)s other films, but I'll make it a point to do so now.
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