Movie Review: Matthias & Maxime

Matthias & Maxime *** ½ / *****
Directed by: Xavier Dolan.
Written by: Xavier Dolan.
Starring: Gabriel D'Almeida Freitas (Matthias), Xavier Dolan (Maxime), Anne Dorval (Manon), Harris Dickinson (McAfee), Marilyn Castonguay (Sarah), Pier-Luc Funk (Rivette), Catherine Brunet (Lisa), Antoine Pilon (Brass), Anne-Marie Cadieux (Martine), Alexandre Bourgeois (Julien), Louise Bombardier (Tante Ginette), Camille Felton (Erika), Adib Alkhalidey (Shariff), Connor McMahon (Avocat), Monique Spaziani (Colette), Samuel Gauthier (Frank), Jacques Lavallée (Me Courtemanche), Louis-Julien Durso (Matisse), Micheline Bernard (Francine). 

Xavier Dolan has been around for more than a decade now – and Mathias and Maxime is his 8^th film in that time. Given that, it’s easy to forget than he’s still only 31 years old – an age at which many filmmakers don’t even have one film under their belt, let alone 8 – most of whom played Cannes, in either Un Certain Regard or the Official Lineup, and many of them winning prizes there as well. It probably shouldn’t be overly surprising then that his filmography is as uneven as it is. He had a pretty good streak going with I Killed My Mother, Heartbeats, Lawrence Anyways and Mommy (I wasn’t much of a fan of Tom at the Farm) – before his last two films – It’s Only the End of the World and The Death and Life of John F. Donovan were widely panned (even still, the former won the Grand Jury Prize at Cannes, for some reason). Those experiences may have stung Dolan a little, because he’s dialed back his ambition for Mathias and Maxime – making a film that probably would have made more sense for his career trajectory around the I Killed My Mother and Heartbeats stage. It certainly isn’t his best film – and he still leans too heavily on some of the crutches that have held his career back a little – but it feels like a career reset in many ways.

 The plot will remind some of Lynn Shelton’s breakthrough Humpday, as it once again centers on two apparently straight male friends, whose feelings for each other are perhaps not quite so platonic. One a weekend getaway with the “boys”, Matthias (Gabriel D’Almedia Freitas) and Maxime (Xavier Dolan) are convinced to act in a student short for a bratty younger sister – only after they’ve agreed to participate do they find out they have to kiss in the film – something apparently they did once before, drunkenly, at a freshmen party. Dolan, cleverly, cuts to black right before their lips touch – but it’s a kiss that haunts the rest of the narrative anyway.

Before this, it seemed like this friend group was drifting apart. Mathias is a lawyer, with a promotion looming, and thinks it may be time to grow up – and leave behind his friends, who all he seems to have in common with is drunken memories. Maxime is about to move to Australia for two years – get a fresh start, away from his abusive, recovering addict mother (Anne Dorval, of course). His departure sets a clock on this relationship – on whether Mathias and Maxime will explore it, or even acknowledge it.

Dolan does reach into his bag of tricks probably too often here – I’m not sure we needed yet another turbulent mother/son relationship featuring Dorval and Dolan in their roles once again, although he changes it enough to imply that at least his character is over it – and has made the smart decision to get away. There is yet another sing-along to a pop song here as well – it was a cheesy highlight in The Death and Life of John F. Donovan, but that movie needed all the help it could get.

The film excels most when its concentrated on its two title characters – their vastly different lives, and their tenuous connection, which may, or may not, mean more to them. Dolan also excels at portraying the undeniable homoeroticism that lurks under all these bromances – these large groups of male friends who drink and party and wrestle, but, you know, they’re not gay – as they’ll protest a little too loudly. The rest of the friend group is kind of a homogeneous mass however – lacking in any real individual depth, mainly because Dolan isn’t really interested in them – he’s interested in the two characters escaping them.

Dolan casts the two leads well - Gabriel D'Almeida Freitas is excellent as Matthias, the man who knows he’s at the precipice of something, but not quite sure what – too mature for the frat boy crap, but perhaps not mature enough to really go after what he wants. And Dolan himself – cast in one of his own films for the first time since Tom at the Farm – gives probably his best performance on camera. Maxime is quieter, shier, more beaten down by life – but not so beaten down that he has given up. You get the sense that he would like to hide from the world outside – the bright red birthmark on his face making that impossible though.

I don’t think Mathias and Maxime is Dolan’s best film – it doesn’t hit the operatic highs of Mommy, or feel as raw and angry as I Killed My Mother. But it is the work of a filmmaker who has grown, matured – and perhaps learned something in his time. Perhaps it is the beginning of a new, exciting chapter in his career.