LA SOIRÉE DES JUTRA
Xavier Dolan lives up to the hype
I’m shocked, truly shocked.
Are you sitting down? If not, take a seat. Here’s a bombshell for you. Xavier Dolan’s Mommy has won every trophy in sight at the 17th annual Soirée des Jutra Sunday night.
If I were writing on Twitter, I would of course add in the obligatory “# sarcasm.” This is not a bombshell. I am not shocked and neither is anyone else.
Pretty well everyone — including this humble columnist in these very pages Saturday — predicted that Mommy was going to dominate the Jutra Gala, the Quebec film awards, and so it did.
The awards ceremony was held Sunday at the Monument-National and broadcast live on ICI Radio- Canada Télé, with hosts Pénélope McQuade and Stéphane Bellavance.
OK, Mommy didn’t win every single Jutra award. For example, Mommy didn’t prevail in the category of supporting actor for the very good reason that there is no supporting actor in Mommy. But the fellow who did win for best supporting actor, Pierre- Yves Cardinal, took home the hardware for another Dolan film, Tom à la ferme. And Cardinal is, by the way, a totally deserving winner for his disturbing performance as a psycho homophobic guy who terrorizes a young gay man played by ... Xavier Dolan.
Mommy was the leading nominee going in, with 10 nods, and it won in eight of those categories, including all the biggies, like best film, direction and screenplay ( both for Dolan himself ), actress ( Anne Dorval), actor ( Antoine Olivier Pilon), and supporting actress ( Suzanne Clément). Dolan’s hypercharged drama about a single mother and her troubled teen son also nabbed the trophies for cinematography ( André Turpin) and editing ( that Dolan guy again!).
The only two nominations that didn’t pan out for Mommy were art direction, which went to Patrice Vermette for 1987, and costumes, which was won by Valérie Lévesque for the retro ’ 80s kitsch look of Ricardo Trogi’s hit comedy 1987. Just to make sure Dolan’s mantelpiece is even more well- stocked, Mommy won in two other categories not counted in the nominations — film that had the most success outside of Quebec and the Billet d’or as top box- office performer.
So Mommy won 10 Jutra trophies in total. The Mommy sweep is actually not the biggest sweep in Jutra history. That honour goes to Jean- Marc Vallée’s masterwork C. R. A. Z. Y., which literally won everything in 2005, going home with 15 statuettes. But it was a pretty dominant performance by Mommy.
The makeup folks will object to this line, but fact is that with the exception of Cardinal’s win as supporting actor, all of the major awards went to Mommy dearest.
“I’d like to dedicate this prize to my mother, who is my only real source of inspiration,” Dolan said after receiving the Jutra Award for best screenplay for Mommy. “I know I don’t call you as often as you’d like me to, but I want you to know that you’re omnipresent in my life.”
Clément sent out big love to Dolan after winning for supporting actress for her role as the shy woman hiding a tragic secret who befriends a mother and her neurotic son.
“Thank you for everything you are, for your craziness,” said Clément. “Thanks for being patient and demanding. You are a mentor in my life.”
The downside of this Mommy domination is the lack of hardware for all of the other deserving Quebec films released in 2014. The other day on Tout le monde en parle, host Guy A. Lepage asked 1987 director Ricardo Trogi if he was a little peeved that his film was almost certain to be drowned by the Mommy tidalwave come Jutra night. There wasn’t much Trogi could say.
Trogi’s film had to live with wins in art direction, costumes and hair — appropriately enough for a film steeped in 1980s new wave culture. But the film I really feel for is writer- director Stéphane Lafleur’s Tu dors Nicole. It’s a startlingly original film, a dreamy off- kilter comic meditation on the unique moment between adolescence and adulthood. Any other year, it would’ve won some big prizes. Julianne Côté, nominated for best actress, and Catherine St- Laurent, up for supporting actress, are both terrific in Tu dors Nicole, but obviously not even Meryl Streep was going to beat out the Mommy actresses Sunday night.
So in the end, Tu dors Nicole was rewarded with just two awards, for sound and music ( Rémy Nadeau- Aubin, Christophe Lamarche- Ledoux).
One positive for other filmmakers is that at least Dolan doesn’t make documentaries, leaving room for others to prevail in that category. The winner was Serge Giguère’s inspired Le mystère MacPherson, an extraordinary National Film Board feature about director Martine Chartrand’s epic 10- year journey making the animated short MacPherson, which was inspired by the Félix Leclerc song. You really should look this one up — it’s a moving story about race, friendship, Quebec history and the strange world of animation filmmaking.
One last thing. It’s hard not to underline the bizarre fact that La soirée des Jutra was held the same night as the Juno Awards, the Canadian music awards, which featured no small number of Quebec musicians in the mix.
That would be that twosolitudes thing rearing its head again. As one Franco journalist told me Sunday night — no one in Quebec pays the slightest attention to the Junos.
That must be why the Prix Gémeaux, the Quebec TV awards ceremony, will take place the same night as the Emmy Awards this fall. Didn’t someone once say we were living in a distinct society ici?