ARTS & CULTURE
Monday, October 27, 2014 19
Film reviews
» continued from page 11
Moments of great tenderness flare up continually in
Dolan’s study of a mother with a boundless fountain
of tough love and an inextinguishably toxic affection
for one’s child. The trailer-trash humour is superbly
transgressive. We ask for filmmakers to take us to difficult places, and while you may have to brace yourself for Mommy, it is a rewarding experience.
In a year when we had upsetting disappointments from Atom Egoyan and Denys Arcand, previously high-flying Canadian directors, and a massively
flawed effort from past master David Cronenberg, it’s
a treat to see that the most daring and audacious film
comes from Dolan, who is on a path to creating one
of the more remarkable film careers in this country’s
history. Mommy should be a lock for a Best Foreign
Language Film nomination, and it may bring Canada
its first Oscar since The Barbarian Invasions in 2004.
Mommy has its flaws: the unnecessarily overwritten prologue expounds an imagined near-future in
2015, a “fictional Canada” where a new law allows a
parent to consign any troubled child to an institution,
and somewhat leadenly introduces the gun in the first
act that must go off in the third. It’s indulgently overlong, losing momentum toward the end when it starts
to feel like Dolan can’t bear to leave his characters.
But it’s a pleasure to see acting and directing blasting away on all cylinders. Mommy manages to fill
every frame with the stuff of life, suffusing every
scene with the wonderful horror of being, vividly
capturing a range of exhilarating emotions from
elation to despair. Two sequences – an impromptu
kitchen dance and a shattering montage that evokes
the finales of Six Feet Under or Take this Waltz – are
among my favourites of the year. It’s Dolan’s finest
work yet. Prodigies don’t get much more prodigious
than this.
vulgar epithets, hammering home the notions that
“if it’s not flawless, it’s worthless” and “there are
no two words in the English language more harmful than ‘good job’.” (Morally, that’s disgraceful;
socially, that’s explosive; artistically, that’s sensical.)
Few actors could pull off Fletcher’s blend of eviscerating wit and manipulative charm as believably as
Simmons does. Simmons delivers every insult with
such punctuating tenacity, the audience can feel
every seething syllable; his venom-spewing is as hypnotic as Full Metal Jacket’s drill instructor Hartman.
The narrative rarely breaks tempo and breathes
and moves like a jazz number, rendering every turn,
reveal, and twist of perspective a stupendous showstopper. It just keeps charging forward, imploring
you to stay plugged in, keeping you off-balance and
adrift. The film’s aversion toward hitting expected
beats lends it a rare, welcome edge of danger. Imagine
a cross between a David Mamet play and a violent UFC
bout, restaged in a music conservatoire. )]ɥѕȵ