Mommy (2014 film)

Dolan wrote the screenplay and chose an unconventional aspect ratio for the film.

Director Xavier Dolan wrote the screenplay, though he said at the time he had never known a person with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder or the same behavioural disorders that the character Steve exhibits.[5] However, Dolan said his own mother is an inspiration for his writing.[6]

With Dolan acknowledging mother-son relationships have always been an underlying theme in his work, the specific idea for Mommy came about after directing Antoine Olivier Pilon in the music video for "College Boy" by Indochine, finding him to be a great actor.[7] Inspired by another song, "Experience" by Ludovico Einaudi, he wrote a scene about a mother fantasizing about a future with her son that will never come to be, and wrote a story around it. Dolan stated it was important to show how unpredictable mental illness can be in a home.[7] The concept of the S-14 law was inspired by an article he had read about a mother who used a law to transfer custody of a child to the state, although in an interview with Le Devoir, Dolan could not recall which country this happened in.[8]

Mommy was filmed in Longueuil, Quebec.[9] Dolan said that when filming, the actors and crew were often rewriting their lines.[10] In casting actresses Anne Dorval and Suzanne Clément, whom Dolan had worked with before, he assigned them roles that he felt were the opposite of what each had previously played.[8]

The film was shot with a handheld camera,[5] in a 1:1 aspect ratio, although most modern films are shot in 1.85:1 or 2.35:1 aspect ratios. On the unusual aspect ratio, Xavier Dolan said, "I know a lot of people are saying, 'Oh, 1:1, how pretentious.' But for me, it seems a more humble and private format, a little more fitting to these lives we're diving into. Cinemascope [2.35:1] would have been extremely pretentious and incompatible for Mommy. To try to get in that apartment and film these people in that aspect ratio would have been unseemly."[11] He also said cinematographer André Turpin had long wanted to experiment with the format.[12] Dolan denied the ratio was meant to invoke the website Instagram, emphasizing this is the original aspect ratio in film history.[13]

On its opening weekend in Quebec, the film grossed $471,902.[16] Mommy was Dolan's first film to achieve success at the box office, grossing over $3.5 million domestically in 2014, becoming the highest-selling film in Quebec for 2014.[19] In Canada alone, it reached the $2 million gross on 16 October.[16]

According to the Montreal Gazette, over one million people went to see the film in France.[19] The film ended its run on 19 March 2015 after making $3.5 million in North America and $9.6 million in other territories, for a worldwide total of $13.1 million.[3]

Anne Dorval received positive reviews for her performance and won the Canadian Screen Award for Best Actress.

On Rotten Tomatoes, the film received an approval rating of 88%, with an average score of 7.86/10 based on 129 reviews; the site's consensus states: "As challenging as it is rewarding, Mommy finds writer-director Xavier Dolan taking another impressive step forward".[20] On Metacritic, the film holds an average score of 74, based on 34 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews" in accordance with the website's standards.[21]

In Canada, David Berry of the National Post gave the film four stars, writing, "As a movie, Mommy is a very similar thing to its namesake jewellery, a flashy, scary, gorgeous little piece of home, a shiny bauble that still manages to hang very close to the heart".[22] Brendan Kelly of the Montreal Gazette gave it five out of five stars, calling it "the absurdly prolific young auteur's best film yet" and "an ode to the strength of tough working-class single mothers everywhere", and praising Anne Dorval as "extraordinary".[23] Brian D. Johnson of Maclean's credited Dorval for an award-worthy "powerhouse performance". Johnson saw Mommy as more mature than Dolan's previous I Killed My Mother, writing "the tables are turned" in writing the film from the mother's perspective.[24] Peter Howell of the Toronto Star gave the film four stars, saying its smartphone-style picture made it timely and concluding it was "one of the best movies of the year, period".[25] Liam Lacey at The Globe and Mail gave the film three stars, calling the introductory information about S-14 "clumsy", but added "What makes the flaws forgivable is Dolan's love of his characters".[26]

On 21 May 2014, Mommy received a four-star rating from The Guardian reviewer Peter Bradshaw, who described the film as "a splashy, transgressive treat, from trailer-trash chat to unexpected sex and surprising emotional depth".[27] Following Dolan's receipt of the Jury Prize at the 2014 Cannes Film Festival, Guardian writer Xan Brooks introduced the film as "a boisterous Oedipal comedy".[28] Peter Debruge of Variety called it "A funny, heartbreaking and, above all, original work".[29] Mark Olsen of the Los Angeles Times wrote the film "feels like nothing less than Dolan's magnum opus, for the time being at least".[13] Sandra Hall of the Sydney Morning Herald wrote that while she initially found there was "too much noise, too many emotional eruptions and too many tone-deaf subtitles", she found Pilon and Dorval's performances to be "remarkable".[30] Peter Travers of Rolling Stone gave the film three and a half stars, calling it rattling.[31] The Wall Street Journal's Joe Morgenstern, while finding the acting "powerful", found fault in the aspect ratio.[32] Richard Brody of The New Yorker panned the film, saying the depiction of Steve "has no basis in psychology; rather, it appears as Dolan's own pseudo-transgressive artistic tantrum".[33]

The film was selected to compete for the Palme d'Or in the main competition section at the 2014 Cannes Film Festival,[34] where it won the Jury Prize.[35] The film also won nine awards at the 3rd Canadian Screen Awards in 2015, including Best Motion Picture[36] and 10 awards at the 17th Jutra Awards, including Best Film. It was also Best Foreign Film at the 40th César Awards.

Mommy was selected as the Canadian entry for Best Foreign Language Film at the 87th Academy Awards, but was not nominated.[37][38] The film was included in the list of "Canada's Top Ten" feature films of 2014, selected by a panel of filmmakers and industry professionals organized by TIFF.[39][40]