Director: Xavier Dolan
Year Released: 2010
Rating: 2.0
Two love-sick romantics (Dolan and Monia Chokri) pine for the same ambiguous, curly-haired young man (Niels Schneider), but they can't figure out exactly which of them he's more interested in. With this and (the slightly better) I Killed My Mother, Dolan's still aping the New Wave (Godard, Truffaut) as well as Wong (without making it his own) - the camera self-consciously zooms in on his performers' hands, the slow-motion is abused - and for all his skill with a camera and knowledge of his predecessors he still neglects to infuse the plot with an appreciable amount of insight into relationships (Schneider's a tease; his two main characters are relatively vapid, if lusty). I do, however, find a fascinating sensitivity in Dolan's persona: for all his preening there's a defensiveness and wounded-ness to him that is inescapable, and with time his ability to self-reflect and to analyze his world may produce some stunning, revelatory movies. Watching him get there is a pleasure.
