Xavier Dolan is an artist, using images for paint, his camera as a brush and the screen his canvas.
Tom leaves Montreal to attend his boyfriend's funeral in a rural town where his boyfriend's conservative mother doesn't know her son was gay, and his mysterious brother hides deep secrets beneath layers of violence.
Is Tom at the Farm a horror film? An LGBTQ statement? A family drama? A humanist exploration of suffering? Yes to all of those, but what's most startling is that it succeeds equally well on every level.
Authors write novels about loss, composers create symphonies to sadness and poets pen volumes of sonnets about love and yet Dolan creates the same effect in the two seconds of film it takes to show a grieving Tom climb into bed with his deceased lover's t-shirt over his face.
That he can consistently channel so much emotion with such a subtle touch makes Xavier Dolan the best director of his generation and one of the greats in any other.
Review by DevalabraBlockedParent2017-11-25T22:40:24Z— updated 2019-12-18T12:15:50Z
I'm a bit confused as to what exactly the point of this movie is.
Maybe some things got lost in translation, maybe it's just as weird even if you understand french, I don't know.
It's not a bad movie but I can't honestly say what exactly is good about it either.
It's a bit eerie(but honestly not that much) and quite confusing. The feeling it evokes is a lot stronger and more present in the movie than the actual plot of it, in this case that's not really a good thing, considering the story itself is confusing so the feeling it's supposed to evoke doesn't really have a leg to stand on.
Tom is letting himself be abused and manipulated by Francis, which is made extra clear when Sara arrives and actually stands up for herself, which Tom clearly doesn't do. He doesn't leave, even though there are several red flags. It takes an entire story about Francis ripping a mans face open(and actually seeing that man) for him to finally leave, I feel bad for him but damn it's ridicuous that it took that much.
Finding out that Guillaume basically slept with everybody and that Tom really wasn't that special makes you feel even worse for him.
He is staying at the farm with Guillaume's crazy family, getting emotionally and physically abused by Francis, all because of a guy that probably didn't care that much for him in the first place. It's obvious that Tom is somehow trying to replace Guillaume with Francis and it's really just sad. Tom just seems completely emotionally drained. Francis obviously doesn't want him to leave, which I'm gonna say is not because he genuinely cares for Tom in the slightest but because of his own selfish reasons and because he's a psychopath.
Everybody is trying to replace Guillaume. Tom is trying to replace Guillaume with Francis, and Francis and Agathe are trying to replace Guillaume with Tom but it just isn't possible and just comes off as extremely odd.
I'm not saying it's a bad movie because there is some depth to it but there is just so much missing from it in order to really make you feel something(other than pity for Tom and the urge to punch Francis in the face).
It keeps you thinking about it though, so that's something.