LAURENCE ANYWAYS - QUEERGURU

Thirtysomething Laurence is a very successful and popular high school teacher, and loves his girlfriend Fred and their very full and happy life together in Montreal. Yet despite all that he has going for him he always has a perpetual nagging sensation that something is amiss. Deep down he has always really known that essentially he feels like a woman trapped in man’s body, and it isn’t until he finally confesses this urge to Fred, that his … and her … life change for ever.

This all could have stacked up to be a regular weepy melodrama with the potential for an Oscar grabbing role, but this work is the creation of cinema’s enfant terrible Xavier Dolan and true to his usual form he throws everything at this making it a startlingly beautiful movie that has the capability of stunning one into silence. As Laurence with unflinching bravery starts his transition and risks every thing that he loves, Dolan focuses mainly on Fred as she sees it all unravel and leads to them having totally different lives over the next decade.

As much as Fred wants to support Laurence in his choice she cannot cope with either the external pressures from society or with her inner demons that keep challenging her even though she can never ever stop loving Laurence as the years go by. As Laurence’s successful second career as a poet brings ‘her’ fame and some fortune, even this will not stifle ‘her’ quest to get back with Fred and ‘she’ goes to some extraordinary lengths to try to make this happen.

Dolan never shows any restraint and very little heed to being p.c., so with his fine sense of high drama, he makes this such a compelling tale. It’s not just the story, but the way he makes it so visually stunning and peppered with some rather inspired music choices that make it so memorable. He’s cast do him, and the movie, real credit too. Laurence is imaginatively played by Melvil Poupaud (‘A Time To Leave’, ‘Mysteries of Lisbon’ etc), and his unpredictable mother is played by the wonderful Nathalie Baye (‘Tell No One’, ‘Venus Beauty Institute’ etc) but it is the remarkable tour de force performance by Suzanne Clement (‘I Killed My Mother’) as Fred that stole the movie and earned her a Best Actress Award at Cannes’s Un Certain Regard.

French-Canadian boy wonder Xavier Dolan is now at the ripe old age of 23 and this is his third multi-award winning movie that he both wrote and directed. The first ‘I Killed My Mother’ in 2009 was the start of his mutual love affair with Cannes Film Festival who have always given him awards for all three films. This ground-breaking debut was based on his own relationship with his mother (who he didn’t literally kill) but sadly the success was tinged with difficulties as his US Distributor went belly up and the movie has been trapped unseen in legal limbo ever since. The second one in 2010 was ‘Heartbeats’ a delightful romantic comedy about a love triangle with Dolan playing one of the leads too.

Dolan is an anarchic genius, over-indulgent and at times maddeningly annoying ….. but a genius nonetheless and all three of his movies are remarkable works that rank very high on my list of all-time favourites. The only reason that I am marking this slightly less than perfect, is that coming at almost three hours long, it badly needed a new editor. The current one is Xavier Dolan.

★★★★★★★★★