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I Killed My Mother AKA J'ai tué ma mère
R2 - United Kingdom - Network Review written by and copyright: Paul Lewis (16th September 2011). |
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The Film
 I Killed My Mother (Xavier Dolan, 2009) 
An assured debut from a very young French-Canadian director (Xavier Dolan was just twenty when the film was produced), the apparently loosely-autobiographical film I Killed My Mother offers a portrait of a suffocating relationship between the film’s protagonist Hubert Minel (played by Dolan himself) and his mother Chantale (Anne Dorval). Living in modern Montreal, Hubert and his mother (his father is absent, until part way through the narrative) exhibit a tense but mutually dependent relationship. Hubert is gay, and the film is also a story of Hubert’s ‘coming out’ to his mother. The film opens with a quotation from Guy de Maupassant (‘We love our mothers unknowingly and only realize how deep-rooted that love is at the ultimate separation’), and throughout the film Dolan uses title cards to display either quotations about the mother-son relationship or the characters’ communications with one another via either letter, email or text message. This is an interesting stylistic decision that, within the context of the film, works well. Dolan also chooses to show Hubert’s reflections on his relationship with his mother via a series of confessional video diary-like scenes, featuring Hubert talking to the camera in monochrome close-up, offering a retrospective perspective on the events depicted within the film. The first of these scenes takes place after the title card featuring the quote from Guy de Maupassant, and Hubert establishes for the audience his thorny relationship with his mother, telling the viewer that, ‘I don’t know what happened. When I was young, we loved each other. I still love her. I can look at her, talk to her, sit next to her, but... I can’t be her son. I could be anyone’s son, but not hers’. 
Much of the film takes place in scenes featuring Hubert and Chantale, which escalate from Hubert criticising his mother for the way in which she eats her cream cake or for applying make-up whilst she is driving, to moments of conflict that are so verbally aggressive that the barbed words seem to tear through the screen. (At one point, Hubert tells Chantale, ‘When I try to imagine what the worst mother in the world is like, I can’t do better than you’.) For such a young filmmaker, Dolan has a firm grasp on the often contradictory nature of human relationships, and in some scenes Hubert and Chantale’s arguments change direction and the pair form an even stronger bond – the conflict, it is suggested, is largely a pretext by which Hubert conceals his sexuality from his mother. In other scenes, the pair simply fail to communicate. Over dinner one evening, Hubert avoids conversation with his mother. She asks him if he is going to ask her about her day. He says, ‘If something special happened, you would’ve already told me. The same goes for me [.…] But since it was another day in a class full of morons […] there’s nothing to talk about’. Hubert’s relationship with Chantale is juxtaposed against the relationship that exists between Antonin (Francois Arnaud), Hubert’s lover, and his libertarian mother Helene (Patricia Tulasne), who has a toyboy lover and allows her son (and Hubert) to smoke dope. Hubert also forms a close bond with a sympathetic young teacher, Julie (Suzanne Clement), after an incident in which he is asked to interview his parents about their jobs. Hubert lies to his teacher, telling her that he never sees his father and his mother is dead (this scene is the source of the film’s title). However, a day or so later Hubert is humiliated when his mother storms into the classroom and angrily declares, ‘Do I look fucking dead?’ Sensing the tension in Hubert’s relationship with Chantale, Julie takes Hubert under her wing and reveals to him that she hasn’t speaken to her own parents for over a decade. Impressed with his stories and poems and seeing potential in Hubert, Julie signs Hubert up for the ‘Young Author’ competition; Hubert’s potential is frustrated when his mother, and his absent father, decide to send him away to a boarding school. 
Both Hubert and Chantale seem to desire a rebuilding of their relationship, reflecting nostalgically on Hubert’s childhood: in one scene, Chantale tells Hubert, ‘This isn’t a hotel [….] We could talk. We used to talk’. Later, in one of the monochrome video diary-like scenes interspersed throughout the narrative, Hubert asserts, ‘We should be able to kill ourselves in our heads, and then be reborn’, he tells us in monochrome close-up: ‘If my mother and I were strangers, I’m sure we’d get along’. Later, he flicks through a photo album and reflects on some of the time he spent with his mother as a child. In a moment of clarity, he tells her that he loves her, ‘so you won’t forget’. He also admits his bond with his mother, which continues to exist despite the conflict between them: ‘It’s strange, if someone hurt her I’d kill him [….] Yet I can think of a hundred people I love more than my mother’. Chantale shows a similar epiphany when, as she sees Hubert aboard the bus that will take him to his new boarding school, Hubert tells her that he will telephone her just before his 18th birthday, ‘and it will be the last time we speak’. ‘What would you do if I died today?’, he asks before storming off in a temper. ‘I’d die tomorrow’, Chantale responds to herself, quietly.  
Throughout the film, Dolan exhibits a strong understanding of mise-en-cadre: during the aforementioned dinner scene, as their conversation becomes more thorny, Dolan frames Chantale and Hubert separately, with Hubert’s mother occupying the right-hand side of the frame in close-up and Hubert occupying the left-hand side of the frame in his close-up. Dolan also has an interesting technique of showing a montage of close-ups of individual items within a room before revealing to the audience the gestalt of the scene. In places, the bold use of mise-en-scene and editing recalls Wong Kar-wai’s era-defining Chungking Express (1994), and the freewheeling non-linear structure, intimate subject matter and insertion of several fantasy sequences (in one, Hubert imagines himself smashing his mother’s crockery in slow-motion; in another, he sees his mother and her friend Denise surrounded by handsome hunks at a tanning salon) suggests that Dolan may have been looking sideways at the Hong Kong New Wave (or perhaps even the New Wave cinemas of the 1960s) when making the film. (In fact, in one scene Dolan even offers a direct pastiche of a shot in Wong Kar-wai’s In the Mood for Love, 2000.) 
The film is uncut and runs for 96:21 mins (PAL).
Video
The film, which was shot on digital video, is presented in what is presumed to be its original aspect ratio of 1.85:1, with anamorphic enhancement. As noted above, there is some very interesting cinematography: framing characters alone or separately to reflect on their relationships and the tension between them. This DVD contains a good presentation of the film.  
Audio
Audio is presented in a French 5.1 track. This is rich and deep. Optional English subtitles are included.
Extras
There is no contextual material.
Overall
At times, I Killed My Mother is reminiscent of the work of Wong Kar-wai – which is a good thing. The young Dolan shows confidence in his material and is unafraid of depicting his protagonist, Hubert, as a narcissistic and occasionally outright spiteful youth. However, Hubert’s sometimes cruel treatment of his mother may alienate some viewers. The film has a strong visual style and is an assured debut. I Killed My Mother is available individually, or as part of Network's Xavier Dolan boxed set La Folie d'Amour, which also includes Heartbeats and Laurence Anyways.  For more information, please visit the homepage of Network. This review has been kindly sponsored by: 
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