J'ai tué ma mère

The Canadian Xavier Dolan (20) wrote and directed this partly autobiographical debut and also played the leading role. Dolan plays Hubert, a self-assured, homosexual teenager who is trying to find his place in the world but is continuously quarrelling with his mother. When Hubert has to write an essay at school about her, he invents the story that his mother is dead. Then the situation escalates. The mother finally finds an opportunity to get rid of Hubert and she sends him off to a boarding school. That has quite the opposite effect and an explosive situation ensues. I Killed My Mother is a coming-of-age story in which the occasionally hilarious but often venomous quarrels between mother and son mask their intense pain. Xavier Dolan's subtle scenario does not only blame the mother.