It’s no mean feat to be 23 and already sweeping film festival circuits of their feet. Such is the life of one Québécois filmmaker Xavier Dolan, whose talents encompass an entire film production crew (being credited as writer, director, editor, head of music and wardrobe stylist is de rigueur on a Dolan film), making him a wunderkind to many and the envy of most. With his third feature film, the gloriously sprawling tour-de-force Laurence Anyways, he’s finally graduated from bourgeois hipster to respected auteur of cinema.
And sprawl, it does. Laurence Anyways unapologetically throws in a 168-minute emotional odyssey of its eponymous protagonist, charting through a tumultuous decade-long relationship between a man and a woman, where the man decides to swap genders – a long-held desire to swap drab trousers for glorious skirts, crew cuts for hair wigs and man boots for high heels for the rest of his life, to the shock, confusion, rage and subsequent acceptance of his suffering, girlfriend-cum-martyr Frédérique, and the reckoning of their professional and personal lives. There are shades of Almodóvar here, but that’s an easy comparison. Dolan fully unravels a road-less-traversed subject matter, dropping kitsch and trashy aesthetic and goes for something full-blooded, dramatic and emotionally alive. Hence Dolan’s choice in eschewing altogether the physical dilemmas of sex change and chooses to frame Laurence’s struggle for identity and non-conformity in 1.37:1 Academy-ratio, giving this film quite an intimate feel, despite of a very bold execution.
For those uninitiated of Dolan’s stylistic approach, your butt will dip into comatose. Laurence isn’t for the austere or the rigorous. It’s an expressionistic, flamboyant melodrama that burns with grand emotion and hyper-stylised visuals. There is so much virtuosity on display here that would put many filmmakers twice (or thrice) Dolan’s age to shame. But it’s not all just style. Sure, there are self-indulgent touches – an über-stylish party soundtracked to Visage’s Fade to Grey resembling like a music video David Bowie would make, people walking in achingly beautiful slow-motion and moments that feels ripped out of an 80′s fashion catwalk reel. Taken in context, it’s a hyper-real homage to a decade of new romanticism, big hair, big emotions and colourful excess.
It’s wise, then, that Dolan’s affectations are balanced by the sheer gravity of his story’s raw, heartbreaking emotional honesty. Melvil Poupaud, charismatic, convincing and magnificent in the role, envelopes Laurence like a tight-fit glove. Never for once you disbelieve this man’s crushing need to embody an ideal entity, just like anybody who yearns to become somebody else – a doctor, a writer, a soldier, and in this case, a woman. This is a testament to Laurence’s determinism, even at the expense of other people around him. Even more astounding is Suzanne Clément’s ferocious, masterfully nuanced performance as Fred. Her descent from liberal romantic to beleaguered ‘victim’ is a sight to behold. She is the film’s bruised heart. Her cri de coeur at a café, defending Laurence from a gauche and insensitive waitress, is breathtaking – a furious, passionate and powerful ‘fuck-you’ speech to social convention, apathy and intolerance. It’s also one of the most moving moments in cinema you’ll see this year.
Intimate yet titanic in scope, stylish yet emotionally alive, this is the finest in Dolan’s filmography so far. Many will bemoan its longueurs, but there’s no denying the magnitude of emotions and virtuosity on display here. Laurence Anyways is a beautifully aching, full-blooded melodrama bursting with feelings and depth. It’s a startlingly ambitious, even courageous, emotional odyssey of self-discovery. And coming from a 23-year-old, it’s a fucking accomplishment.
Written by Janno Datinguinoo
