Twenty-five-year-old Quebecois auteur Xavier Dolan stylishly revisits the maternal angst and teen alienation of his 2009 debut, I Killed My Mother, with his latest Montreal-set feature. In the near future, circumstances force brassy widow Diana “Die” (Anne Dorval) to remove her violently hyperactive son, Steve (Antoine-Olivier Pilon), from a special-care institution and to homeschool him, and it’s not long before his anarchic instability leads to a paroxysm of domestic unrest. But when their shy, stammer-afflicted neighbor Kyla (Suzanne Clément) enters the picture, an enigmatic and eruptive ménage emerges, transforming the lives of all three. The histrionic melodrama that unfolds between mother, son, and neighbor is daringly rendered in the unusual 1:1 aspect ratio by cinematographer André Turpin and is cast against an idiosyncratic backdrop of late-90s pop in Dolan’s most fully realized work to date. A Roadside Attractions release.

Cannes Film Festival 2014, Jury Prize
Toronto International Film Festival 2014

“Mommy is an exhilarating 134 minutes of cinema. Xavier Dolan has that enfant-terrible attitude of a young Lars von Trier or Leos Carax, the flair for melodrama of a Northern Almodóvar, and a fearlessness in plumbing the depths of ordinary people that evokes even Cassavetes.” —Joumane Chahine, Film Comment

“Critics' Pick! Seethes and howls with unchecked feeling.” —A.O. Scott, The New York Times