French-Canadian director Xavier Dolan has been the voice of youth at Cannes for a long time now.
His first feature, I Killed My Mother, premiered here in 2009 when he was just 20. He’s been a regular ever since, winning a major award for Mommy in 2014.
Matthias & Maxime, set again in Montreal, is another coming-of-age movie, about a young man trying to find where he might fit in the world. Maxime, a handsome boy, despite a birthmark running down one side of his face, looks after his mother (Anne Dorval), an abusive chain-smoking nightmare, struggling with addiction. Maxime’s plan is to escape to Australia for a couple of years.
His pals from school still get together, play games, rile each other and have a good time but they’re heading in different directions. Matthias, for instance (lean and handsome Gabriel D’Almeida Freitas) is doing well at a boring law firm, and is settled down with a dull, bossy girl too.
At a lakeside get-together, Matt and Max are roped into acting in a film being made by a tiresome younger sister, Erika, a film school student who wants the guys to kiss because she “doesn’t like gender labels”. Friends from childhood, they can’t quite remember if they ever did this before, at some drunken teenage party.
That kiss has confused consequences. At Max’s drunken leaving party, Matt insults him, calling him “inkstain”, and walks out, into a storm. But lo! he comes back. Soon Matt and Max are kissing passionately in the kitchen, their hands in each other’s pants. When Matt breaks it off, saying “this isn’t us!”, Max tells him they need to talk. Will they, before Max takes the plane?
Matthias & Maxime is filmed all in tightly pressed close-up, faces looming, constantly erupting into furious rows, shouting and shrieking. It’s like being at the worst party ever. Xavier Dolan produces, writes, directs, edits, chooses the costumes — and stars.
He is, of course, Maxime.
