Xavier Dolan
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Ken Loach, Xavier Dolan Top Surprising Cannes Awards Ceremony; Andrea Arnold’s American Honey Wins Jury Prize
One of the more surprising Cannes awards ceremonies has just ended, with Ken Loach becoming a two-time Palme d’Or winner with his I, Daniel Blake, about a 59-year-old carpenter battling England’s health care system following a heart attack, winning the top prize. (The director’s The Wind that Swept the Barley won the Palme in 2006.) I, Daniel Blake, while not one of the buzzier titles in the Competition, was generally well received; the same can’t be said for the jury’s Grand Prix, awarded to Xavier Dolan’s It’s Only the End of the World. Variety’s Guy Lodge tweeted, “Giving Xavier Dolan […]
by Scott Macaulay on May 22, 2016 -
Cannes Dispatch #3: It’s Only the End of the World, The Park, The Red Turtle
The best thing about Xavier Dolan’s It’s Only the End of the World: 35mm. Take whatever jabs you will at the 27 year-old Québécois (he’s certainly taken his fair share this year as the first of several punching bags in the Competition slate), but he is as mindful as any active filmmaker — young or old — about basic formal decisions like aspect ratios and the textural differences between digital and celluloid images. The only new film in the entire festival to be projected from a film print (Cannes Classics has two: Frederick Wiseman’s Hospital and Roger Corman’s The Pit and […]
by Blake Williams on May 20, 2016 -
Mother Load: Xavier Dolan’s Tom at the Farm
I have the romantic’s weakness for tales of thwarted opportunities in the relationship department. Saddest and most frustrating are those for whom faulty communication, intentional or otherwise, generates the lion’s share of the blame. Ever read Poe’s short story “The Purloined Letter?” It involves theft, blackmail, a woman of royal lineage — it’s opiated Poe, what do you expect? — but we Little People can suffer in our more ordinary ways from the exchange of tainted information. I use the word exchange purposely: The action pains not only the victim, but the perp as well. Quebecois director Xavier Dolan puts […]
by Howard Feinstein on Aug 14, 2015 -
Xavier Dolan’s Mommy Was Shot In a New Aspect Ratio
As far as I know, this is a first: Québecois auteur Xavier Dolan’s fifth feature Mommy premiered at Cannes today, and word has trickled out from first viewers that it’s shot in a ratio that’s new to the movies. 1.1 is a perfect square: think a CD cover photo. Dolan shot a music video in the aspect ratio last year, which inspired him to do the same for Mommy — a fact he somehow managed to keep under wraps. In the press kit, Dolan explains his thought process: “After having shot a music video in 1:1 last year, it dawned […]
by Vadim Rizov on May 21, 2014 -
Venice International Film Festival 2013
To get to the Lido — the strip of beachy land upon which the Venice Film Festival is held every year — one must take the vaporetto (or water taxi) from the Marco Polo Airport. While waiting for the transport to arrive, one is stuffed into a rectangular holding pen that sways and jerks with the current, provoking a mild but unmistakable seasickness in the more sensitive among us. Little did I know I was to experience almost exactly the same feeling the following morning while watching festival opener Gravity, Alfonso Cuarón’s first since 2006’s Children of Men. It’s an […]
by Ashley Clark on Oct 21, 2013
