J’ai tué ma mère
I remember that neither Shii nor Gorp nor many other reviews I saw really liked the film. Either they preferred Xavier Dolan’s other movies, or they made a lot of negative comments on how he is young etc. Maybe the film is not a masterpiece in handicraft and there was nothing about the storytelling that really stood out to me, but there is something fresh about the story itself and how Dolan played its main character. It seems that I have never grown out of these teenage stories, and this is a teenage story written by a teenager, which is utterly unusual and thus very intriguing to me. But if the greatness of “J’ai tué ma mère” must be judged on whether its ‘message’ is good or not, then it may not actually be that great for many people because not everyone can identify with those characters. Case in point, “The Great Gatsby” is really not that great of a story with all its despicable characters and rather simple ending. Furthermore, Gatsby (like Raskolnikov for example) is extremely fascinating and fun as a character, but no normal human is anything like him and nobody will read the book and say “Oh wow he’s just like me!” In the case of “The Great Gatsby” it’s Fitzgerald’s amazing writing that turns this sad man into aforementioned fascinating character and his lame love story into an incredibly fun read. In that regard, “The Great Gatsby” is the exact opposite of “J’ai tué ma mère”, whose characters are very close to life, so if they are not close to you, then the film might easily be boring to you. Heck even I thought the end was rather stupid, and I resented the main character for cheating on his super cute and supportive boyfriend. Perhaps Hubert’s situation is not that easy to relate to after all: I assume that most people have a nice mother who may freak out if her children were gay, whereas Hubert’s mother is absolutely not nice but pretty OK with him being gay.
As for me, I see the movie from a completely different perspective: Being a mother now, I am ridiculously afraid of the idea of turning into a hellish mother who happens to be OK with my children being gay. Dolan managed to paint the picture of a mother who is hateful yet extremely human at the same time. She does so much for Hubert and he is obsessed with her, yet she fails with him on so many other accounts and he has every reason to be angry with her. Her “I wake up at 5am every day for 17 years” totally got me, just imagining that life would drive me crazy. To me it’s no wonder that she kind of turned into this witch who feels like her son is nothing but ungrateful. So please God let me not turn into that witch.
I also think the mother kind of looks like Shirley Maclaine. Just a little bit. I look forward to seeing her in “Mommy” again. Actually, after “J’ai tué ma mère” I am totally looking forward to Dolan’s other films, perhaps everybody is right and his other movies are even better. That would be awesome.