El presente trabajo se enmarca en un contexto de auge, popularidad e influencia en públicos jóvenes del cine independiente norteamericano. Específicamente se focaliza en uno de los directores que de ...forma singular conecta con los nuevos relatos de la contemporaneidad, el canadiense Xavier Dolan. A través del análisis de los personajes principales de las seis películas que hasta ahora ha realizado –Yo maté a mi madre (2009), Los amores imaginarios (2010), Laurence Anyways (2012), Tom en la granja (2013), Mommy (2014) y Solo el fin del mundo (2016)– se determina el comportamiento de éstos en torno a una temática siempre presente en su filmografía: la relación maternofilial. Entre sus principales conclusiones destaca cómo en sus películas están muy marcadas y constantes cuatro variables narrativas: la mala relación madre e hijo, la ausencia de la figura paterna, el ocultamiento de la identidad u orientación sexual y la no aceptación de la familia junto con las conductas antisociales por parte del hijo. Además, todas ellas se encuentran de forma recurrente, en mayor o menor medida, en todos sus filmes, no observándose una tendencia clara o evolución; todos son temas que obsesionan al director, caracterizan a sus personajes, y construyen un universo ficcional homogéneo.
Introducción. En el presente artículo se explora la relación entre el tema del doble y el género, que se desarrolla principalmente en el procedimiento de desdoblamiento por metamorfosis, donde las ...características de compatibilidad e identidad personal propias del doble clásico varían. Objetivos y metodología. En el análisis indagamos en las distintas posibilidades que surgen en estas historias, deteniéndonos en el concepto de identidad personal —a través de los elementos microtextuales del tema— y en las variantes del desdoblamiento dispuestas por Doležel —paradigmáticas, sintagmáticas, autenticidad y modos de construcción—. Para ello, se analizan las películas La piel que habito (Pedro Almodóvar, 2011), Laurence Anyways (Xavier Dolan, 2012) y Tomboy (Céline Sciamma, 2011). Resultados y conclusiones. Como conclusión, observamos que la identidad personal prevalece frente a la cuestión del cambio o confusión de género (voluntario o no), especialmente a través de los elementos microtextuales del nombre propio y de la máscara/disfraz. La metamorfosis recrea dobles excluyentes en el tiempo y espacio, justificadamente auténticos, con puntos en común entre ambos y que poseen distintos modos de construcción (deseo, castigo y rol social) en función de los clásicos propuestos por Kovacshazy. Las tres películas, además, coinciden con la premisa de Kuhn sobre el cine feminista, haciendo visible lo invisible, narrando y problematizando —a través de un tema con tanta tradición como la del doble—, sobre cuestiones poco presentes dentro del cine mayoritario.
Cet essai propose une rencontre entre le film Laurence, Anyways (2012) , par Xavier Dolan, et le concept trans-. La fidélité à son devenir permet à Laurence de reconnaître ce que Deleuze appellerait ...l’univocité de son être. En montrant les transitions corporelles et affectives de Laurence, Dolan montre la constante chez elle.
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Several critics have described Xavier Dolan as a gifted yet self-indulgent filmmaker. From the stylish costume design to the carefully composed arrangement of colors and objects within the mise en ...scène, Dolan's films would seem to be guilty of an over-investment in the image. This essay interrogates the aesthetic and affective possibilities that the ostensibly intolerable textuality of Dolan's films allows by focusing on their distinctive deployment of the musical parenthesis. What may one gain by indulging in the pleasures of the parenthetical mode? The expectation according to which such pleasures should be dispensed with moderation betrays suspicion towards a filmic mode of stylistic and emotional excess that oversteps certain boundaries and, in so doing, undermines hierarchies of value and taste. This essay questions the authoritative appeal of these hierarchies, arguing that there may be something valuable - and queer - about their displacement.
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...its urgency is heightened by the countdown the film initiates as Max prepares to leave for Australia; his destination’s literal and figurative distance from their immediate present, evidenced in a ...later scene in which Max’s difficulty with English prompts a person to wonder how he will communicate in Australia, almost necessitating a resolution. From a distinctive birthmark which covers one half of his face to the t-shirts and jackets he wears or even the blood that trickles down his forehead after a heated episode with his mother, Max is predominantly linked to the colour red. Max, on the other hand, despite the unsteadiness of his life, has a quiet surety about him, and the tender vulnerability of Dolan’s performance does much to drive home the emotional weight of Matthias et Maxime.
Fast and Furious KOTTE, CLAUDIA
French forum,
10/2019, Volume:
44, Issue:
2
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
The following article examines the use of sound in Xavier Dolan's 2014 film Mommy. While powerful soundtracks that heighten the emotional impact of his films have become Dolan's trademark, the ...soundtrack in Mommy – here understood in Michel Chion's sense as the composite track containing voice, music and sound effect–marks a new stage in Dolan's development and in sound design in general. Dolan not only adapts the duration and editing of scenes to the duration and rhythm of a song, but also molds his scenes around certain songs. Music indeed drives his melodrama and orchestrates the protagonists' ups and downs, while the plasticity of the human voice underscores important developments and highlights crucial reversals. In the famous Wonderwall scene, in which the aspect ratio extends from 1:1 to widescreen, music literally invades the movie theater. Dolan's soundtrack not only opens up new realms of subjectivity and belonging, but also unsettles our sense of perception and hints at deeper implications of the technological set-up. Mommy ultimately calls into question the ontological bond between a sound and its originsand exemplifies the dualistic nature of film sound, that is, the split between voice and image, and the process of grafting voices onto a body.
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This article analyses the gazes, looks, stares and glares in Laurence Anyways (Xavier Dolan, 2012), and examines their affective, interpretive, and symbolic qualities, and their potential to create ...viewer empathy through affect. The cinematic gaze can produce sensations of shame and fear, by offering a sequence of varied “encounters” to which viewers can react, before we have been given a character onto which we can deflect them, thus bypassing the representational, narrative and even the sympathetic power of the medium to create “raw”, apparently unmediated sensations. Through the point-of-view shot and direct address, the viewer is the object of the gazes it receives, and experiences their hate and rejection before actually being presented with the film's narrative object of the gaze – the film's protagonist, a transgender woman named Laurence. It examines how the viewer, after being affected, interprets and misinterprets the emotions behind the gazes, and then cognitively attaches the gazes' importance to the narrative. It analyses how the gazes not only create viewer empathy for Laurence, but also create a shared experience between Laurence and the viewer that enhances this empathic connection. It concludes by considering the symbolic importance of the gaze, and Laurence's desire for the gaze as a marker of agency and acknowledgement.
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