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Critics Consensus: As challenging as it is rewarding, Mommy finds writer-director Xavier Dolan taking another impressive step forward.
Critic Consensus: As challenging as it is rewarding, Mommy finds writer-director Xavier Dolan taking another impressive step forward.
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All Critics (120) | Top Critics (30) | Fresh (106) | Rotten (14)
I suppose the relationship is Oedipal or primal or something or other, but mostly it's just an excuse for Dolan to stage a series of gaudy shout-fests.
A story of the combative relationship between a mother and her son filled with delirious swells of effusive love and sudden plummets into madness and hate.
Dolan is able to weave dialogue, camerawork, a fluid yet urgent editing style, and a magpie's ear for pop music into a cinematic world that you can almost hold in your hand before it starts spilling over.
The movie's overlong, underpopulated and often devastating to watch. But it's told with an uncanny realism, and when it's over you feel shaken and a little sick - and realize that you can finally exhale.
Mother and son gesticulate wildly but remain undefined; Dolan's blandly showy aesthetic matches the vainly hectic action.
Dolan is only 25, and though he doesn't have Orson Welles beat, this has to be one of the best films ever written and directed by a 25-year-old.
Dolan's weakness is that beneath the razzamatazz, he's saddled himself with a straightforward narrative, thus his artillery merely serves the purpose of hammering home subtext
... for some this film will be drama with a capital D and a little too much but for me it epitomises what film making truly is: storytelling, imagery and engaging the viewer's heart and mind from start to finish.
All three of the leads do excellent work, but Anne Dorval is especially stunning. I won't resort to the cliché "larger than life" to describe her performance, because nothing is larger than life in Mommy - except for life itself.
The fact that this unusual film not only works, but is one of the best of the year, is conclusive proof that Xavier Dolan has joined the top tier of directors.
Xavier Dolan's film gets under the skin, and stays there.
In Mommy, Dolan has essentially stunted his work, speaking both figuratively and literally.
A decent but uneven effort that feels too long for the kind of story it wants to tell and not really well polished as a whole, and its unusual 1:1 aspect ratio may be clever, especially as a basis for the most beautiful scene of the film, but also starts to be tiring after some time.
Super Reviewer
Xavier Dolan likes to do the epics so I am not sure if I saw the pure director's cut but this is nonetheless a good descent into the world of the working class in Montreal with a serious treatment of mental illness and how one single mother dealt with her child's ailment. Once again a masterpiece.
Canada's entry for Best Foreign Language Film at the 87th Academy Awards, "Mommy" is Xavier Dolan's best work to date. It's a powerfully moving film with smothering performances and Dolan's trademark style. It will punch you in the gut, seemingly for the fun of it, then show you the valid intention of that punch that will leave you in somber gratitude. Good luck at this year's Oscars, "Mommy." I have very high hopes for you.
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