XAVIER DOLAN

Heart To Heart

It’s rare to find anyone who writes, directs and stars in their own films and even rarer to find someone who does all three and is only 21 years of age. Canadian actor, director and writer Xavier Dolan is one such rarity, with two full length films already under his belt.

Back in 2009 Dolan released his first feature I Killed My Mother, and it didn’t take long for the film industry to sit up and take note. After garnering acclaim at the Cannes Film Festival with his first cinematic offering, Dolan began work on his second feature, Heartbeats, which is currently screening as part of the Lotterywest Festival Films season.

Just like I Killed My Mother, Heartbeats is loosely based on Dolan’s personal experiences, charting the relationship between two friends who get trapped in a love triangle with a mysterious man.

“Writing is so personal and it takes so much time and energy so you put a lot of yourself into it,” Dolan tells X-Press down the line from his home town of Montreal. “Even if it’s an alien story there’s such an involvement that you can’t help talking about yourself somehow. It seems narcissistic but it’s true.

“I’m young so I don’t have a lot of choices – I want my writing and my stories to be interesting so I have to have this empirical approach and take into account my life, my memories, my stories and my past. My third film Laurence Anyways is fictional – I had to imagine a lot of things and it’s not that close to my life, in fact it’s not close to my life at all.”

When asked why he chose to undertake the massive task of writing, directing and starring in his first two films, Dolan reveals that it all comes down to control – he knows what he wants and being involved in all facets of the production process helps him achieve his vision.

“I’ve always been an actor since I was four years old. I couldn’t bare the idea of not acting. I actually wrote and directed I Killed My Mother in order to be the only one who could play the lead. That was the reason why I decided to act in my own film. I was unemployed and it seemed like it was the only way to make a film – to write and direct and give myself a role. I’ve always written since I was a kid and directing, even though it was the only option I had to be able to act in my first film, it became a new passion I discovered afterwards. I love to direct.”

Though he’s relatively new to the whole directing caper Dolan excels at it, crafting beautiful shot after beautiful shot which creates a visual feast for those who seek out his films. For Heartbeats Dolan tried his darndest to recreate the feelings we experience when in love.

“In Heartbeats because it talks about love and people who are madly, blindly infatuated with others, it just seemed logical to me to pay as much attention to the aesthetic of the film in order to portray with accuracy the feeling of awe in which we are when we’re in love. Characters are in slow motion, the colours, the costumes, the songs – all the visual aspects of the film were very important because love magnifies things.”

_EMMA BERGMEIER