The eighth feature by the enfant terrible of Canadian cinema Xavier Dolan premiered in the main competition at the 72nd Cannes Film Festival.
In Matthias & Maxime Dolan returns to the style of his early works but assumes a tender and melancholic tone. This is an intimate meditation with the rebellious cinematography typical of André Turpin. The rough, jumpy camera work imitating home videos once again follows the complicated relationship of a mother and son. Anne Dorval, who has starred in four of Dolan’s films, plays a childish and cruel mother whose main fear is to lose her connection with her son.
Matthias and Maxime, who once kissed as teenagers, have been close friends since school and are now approaching their thirties. Matthias (Gabriel D'Almeida Freitas’ debut in a feature) has a career in law and is getting married. Maxime, played by Dolan, takes care of his quick-tempered mother and is preparing to move to Australia. During a countryside gathering they agree to act in their friend’s short, where their roles require them to kiss. The kiss revives a long-forgotten feeling that balances between friendship and infatuation.
Xavier Dolan is often referred to as a rebel and a wunderkind. Having dropped out of college, at the age of 20 he presented his directorial debut, I Killed My Mother, and won three awards in the Director's Fortnight program at the 2009 Cannes Film Festival. Despite the early fame, as well as the attention, pressure, and critique it brought him, Dolan seems to be following his feeling and does not seek to impress the viewer, continuing to make emotional cinema of a new sentimentality.
The film will be screened in French and English with Russian subtitles.
Matthias & Maxime
Director Xavier Dolan
Canada, 2019. 119 min. 18+