Mommy
I found it a very powerful, intense and deeply sad film. It is not comfortable, calm or emotionally small: it screams, sings, explodes, embraces, breaks and starts again. But that is exactly why it works. Dolan tells a mother-son relationship full of love, anger, fear, dependence and a terrible impossibility: loving each other deeply is not always enough to save each other.
Steve is not simply "a problematic boy". He is explosive, unpredictable, sometimes dangerous, but also vulnerable and desperate for affection. He can go from charm to violence in seconds, and that gives every scene with him a constant tension. You look at him with tenderness and fear at the same time. That is where the film gets it right: it does not turn him into a monster or a pure victim.
Diane, his mother, felt like the absolute heart of the film. She is vulgar, excessive, strong, chaotic, funny, desperate and deeply loving. She lives exhausted, but refuses to let go of her son. There is something heroic and devastating about her: not because she is perfect, but because she keeps trying to hold together a life that is slipping through her hands.
Their relationship is beautiful and terrible. They love each other in an enormous, almost physical way, but that love also destroys them. She wants to protect him from the world, from institutions and from himself; he loves her, but also drags her into a place where everything can explode. The film understands that tragedy very well: there are families where love truly exists and still cannot become salvation.
Kyla brings a beautiful balance. She enters as a strange neighbor, blocked by her own pain, and slowly becomes a kind of impossible third piece. With her, Diane and Steve seem to find a temporary, odd and luminous family. She does not cure anything, but for a while she allows another life to feel imaginable.
I loved the music. Dolan uses famous songs without fear, almost in full, with enormous emotion. Counting Crows' "Colorblind" already brings a beautiful fragility, but the "Wonderwall" moment is simply wonderful. When Steve opens his arms and the screen widens, the film lets you breathe with him. It is a simple and powerful image: for a few minutes, the world stops being closed in.
The square format is a magnificent idea. It is not just a visual whim. It makes the characters' lives feel compressed, airless, trapped between invisible walls. When the image opens, it feels like a real liberation; when it closes again, it hurts because you understand how fragile that freedom was.
The supermarket scene, when Steve cuts his wrists, is very hard. There the film makes clear that this is not just a story about a difficult teenager or a suffering mother. There is despair, emotional illness, impulses nobody can control and the terrible sense that Diane lives on the edge of disaster. Loving someone like that must be exhausting and terrifying.
What broke me most was the future imagined by the mother. For a few minutes we see a beautiful life for Steve: growing up, being well, having a normal existence, perhaps forming a family, perhaps becoming someone who could survive his own chaos. Then we understand that it is a dream, a fantasy of Diane's. That blow is brutal because you do not lose something that happened, but something she needed to believe possible.
That moment sums up the whole film. Diane does not want to get rid of Steve; she wants her son to have a chance. She wants to imagine that all the suffering can lead to a decent life. And when reality imposes itself, the pain is enormous. There is no easy villain. There is love, illness, helplessness and a system that appears both as a last way out and as a defeat.
I also understand those who may find it excessive. Dolan is not discreet: he underlines, stretches songs, pushes melodrama and sometimes seems to want every scene to be a fire. But it worked for me because that lack of restraint fits what he is telling. This story could not be cold or elegant; it had to be a little overflowing.
The performances are tremendous. Anne Dorval is impressive, Antoine Olivier Pilon has a wild energy and Suzanne Clément brings a silent sadness that balances the whole film. Together they make it more than a stylistic exercise. Without them, the format and the music would only be tricks; with them, they become emotion.
In the end, for me it remains a very intense film, perhaps imperfect, but brutally alive. I loved its music, its anger, its tenderness, its use of framing and that feeling of watching two people who love each other so much that they hurt each other because they do not know how to live any other way. Mommy hurts because it understands something terrible: sometimes love is enormous, but life is bigger.
Steve is not simply "a problematic boy". He is explosive, unpredictable, sometimes dangerous, but also vulnerable and desperate for affection. He can go from charm to violence in seconds, and that gives every scene with him a constant tension. You look at him with tenderness and fear at the same time. That is where the film gets it right: it does not turn him into a monster or a pure victim.
Diane, his mother, felt like the absolute heart of the film. She is vulgar, excessive, strong, chaotic, funny, desperate and deeply loving. She lives exhausted, but refuses to let go of her son. There is something heroic and devastating about her: not because she is perfect, but because she keeps trying to hold together a life that is slipping through her hands.
Their relationship is beautiful and terrible. They love each other in an enormous, almost physical way, but that love also destroys them. She wants to protect him from the world, from institutions and from himself; he loves her, but also drags her into a place where everything can explode. The film understands that tragedy very well: there are families where love truly exists and still cannot become salvation.
Kyla brings a beautiful balance. She enters as a strange neighbor, blocked by her own pain, and slowly becomes a kind of impossible third piece. With her, Diane and Steve seem to find a temporary, odd and luminous family. She does not cure anything, but for a while she allows another life to feel imaginable.
I loved the music. Dolan uses famous songs without fear, almost in full, with enormous emotion. Counting Crows' "Colorblind" already brings a beautiful fragility, but the "Wonderwall" moment is simply wonderful. When Steve opens his arms and the screen widens, the film lets you breathe with him. It is a simple and powerful image: for a few minutes, the world stops being closed in.
The square format is a magnificent idea. It is not just a visual whim. It makes the characters' lives feel compressed, airless, trapped between invisible walls. When the image opens, it feels like a real liberation; when it closes again, it hurts because you understand how fragile that freedom was.
The supermarket scene, when Steve cuts his wrists, is very hard. There the film makes clear that this is not just a story about a difficult teenager or a suffering mother. There is despair, emotional illness, impulses nobody can control and the terrible sense that Diane lives on the edge of disaster. Loving someone like that must be exhausting and terrifying.
What broke me most was the future imagined by the mother. For a few minutes we see a beautiful life for Steve: growing up, being well, having a normal existence, perhaps forming a family, perhaps becoming someone who could survive his own chaos. Then we understand that it is a dream, a fantasy of Diane's. That blow is brutal because you do not lose something that happened, but something she needed to believe possible.
That moment sums up the whole film. Diane does not want to get rid of Steve; she wants her son to have a chance. She wants to imagine that all the suffering can lead to a decent life. And when reality imposes itself, the pain is enormous. There is no easy villain. There is love, illness, helplessness and a system that appears both as a last way out and as a defeat.
I also understand those who may find it excessive. Dolan is not discreet: he underlines, stretches songs, pushes melodrama and sometimes seems to want every scene to be a fire. But it worked for me because that lack of restraint fits what he is telling. This story could not be cold or elegant; it had to be a little overflowing.
The performances are tremendous. Anne Dorval is impressive, Antoine Olivier Pilon has a wild energy and Suzanne Clément brings a silent sadness that balances the whole film. Together they make it more than a stylistic exercise. Without them, the format and the music would only be tricks; with them, they become emotion.
In the end, for me it remains a very intense film, perhaps imperfect, but brutally alive. I loved its music, its anger, its tenderness, its use of framing and that feeling of watching two people who love each other so much that they hurt each other because they do not know how to live any other way. Mommy hurts because it understands something terrible: sometimes love is enormous, but life is bigger.
Mini Review: I found it a very powerful, intense and deeply sad film. It is not comfortable, calm or emotionally small: it screams, sings, explodes, embraces, breaks and starts again. But that is exactly why it works. Dolan tells a mother-son relationship full of love, anger, fear, dependence and a terrible impossibility: loving each other deeply is not always enough to save each other. Steve is not simply "a problematic boy". He is explosive, unpredictable,...
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