Laurence (Melvil Poupaud) and Fred (Suzanne Clément) face some tough challenges after he declares his desire to live life as a woman in LAURENCE ANYWAYS
LAURENCE ANYWAYS (Xavier Dolan, 2012)
Angelika Film Center
18 West Houston St. at Mercer St.
Opens Friday, June 28
212-995-2570
www.angelikafilmcenter.com
www.laurenceanywaysthemovie.com
Winner of the Queer Palm at Cannes, Xavier Dolan’s Laurence Anyways is an epic Canadian romance about the sexual and emotional bond between two people in the midst of complex change. Montréal teacher Laurence Alia (Melvil Poupaud) and actress Frédérique Belair (Suzanne Clément) are madly in love, sharing a unique worldview — one of the things they do is regularly list things that minimize their pleasure. But when Laurence suddenly tells Fred that he was born in the wrong body and wants to live life as a woman, their relationship is profoundly challenged. At first, Fred tries to accept Laurence as a woman, helping him choose clothes and defending him in public, but soon it gets to be too much for her as she considers what lies ahead. Meanwhile, Laurence loses his job — although the students are fine with his change, the parents aren’t — and so decides to focus on his writing career. Over the course of twelve tumultuous years, Laurence and Fred pursue life both together and apart, with drama following them everywhere they go. Former child actor Dolan, who turned twenty-four this past March, wrote, directed, and edited Laurence Anyways, already his third feature film, following 2009’s I Killed My Mother and 2010’s Heartbeats. At 168 minutes, it is at least a half hour too long, but it regularly takes intriguing, unexpected twists and turns that makes it worth sticking with, even as Dolan tries to squeeze in too much. Clément, who was named Best Actress at Cannes’ Un Certain Regard sidebar, gives a dynamic performance as Fred; her hairstyles alone, as the story moves between 1987 and 1999, are worth the price of admission, especially when seen in Dolan’s stunning compositions, which center on lush reds and whites. Poupaud (A Christmas Tale, Genealogies of a Crime) is beautifully restrained as Laurence as he deals with Fred and her family, his colleagues at work, and his mother (Nathalie Baye), who shockingly admits that she never bonded with him when he was a child. Dolan, who also did the costumes, includes several visually dazzling scenes reminiscent of MTV video interludes, as water crashes down and clothing flies through the air in slow motion; the soundtrack features songs by Fever Ray, Kim Carnes, the Cure, Duran Duran, and Depeche Mode as well as Prokofiev, Tchaikovsky, Beethoven, and Vivaldi. Although it takes some dedication on the part of the viewer, Laurence Anyways is a startlingly different kind of romance, from an emerging young filmmaker with a bright future.