Endless love story
Laurence Anyways
★★ (out of 4) Starring Melvil Poupaud and Suzanne Clément. Written and directed by Xavier Dolan. 161 minutes. Opens Sept. 21 at TIFF Bell Lightbox. 14A
The third feature by Quebec’s Xavier Dolan isn’t an outright failure, but neither is it an unqualified success. It’s a gender-identity love story between a man named Laurence (Melvil Poupaud) who believes he’s really female, and a woman named Fred (Suzanne Clément) who isn’t quite sure whether her heart beats according to gender or to desire. Poupaud and Clément render love and confusion with equal empathy — especially Clément, who won an award at Cannes — but writer/director Dolan indulges himself with a flabby screenplay. The story just doesn’t have the heft that its 161-minute running time implies. It’s about an hour longer than the story requires, even for one that spans decades.
Dolan’s first two features, J’ai tué ma mère (I Killed My Mother) and Les amours imaginaires (Heartbeats), cost about $600,000 apiece to make.
Laurence Anyways had a production budget close to $8 million, but with the exception of a few big-scale visual metaphors involving water, clothes and leaves, it’s difficult to see what Dolan needed the extra cash for.
The on-again, off-again romance between Laurence and Fred begins to take on the same feeling of déjà vu as the chain-smoking of the film’s tobacco-addicted characters.
This isn’t to take away from the affecting performances of Poupaud and Clément. And Dolan retains his gift both for dialogue and for strong visuals.
In fairness, the Canadian jury at TIFF disagrees with me: it named Laurence Anyways Best Canadian Feature at the close of the recent fest.
It’s just that this time, at least for me, Dolan has let his enthusiasm for an idea run away from him.