by Chris Feil

Notable among the complaints lobbed at Xavier Dolan are his music video stylings and his pop-heavy song choices. Say what you will about the auteur’s self-seriousness, but when his musical instincts work, they truly work. Nowhere does this musical instinct shine as brightly as Mommy.

The film’s psuedo-scifi premise (a fictional law allows parents to institutionalize their children) sets the film in the immediate future but the film musically shows its family unit as stuck in the past. Teenage Scott is christened with Counting Crows and Eiffel 65’s brainworm “Blue”, and he’s grafted with a dated whiteboy swagger. His mother Die is adorned in former hits from Dido and Sarah McLachlan, and we see the classy adult contempo hopes in her tacky bargain bin compilation CD package...