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| Grade: C+ |
The first time we see the titular character of Tom at the Farm, he is driving through the corn fields of rural Quebec. He is played by Xavier Dolan, back in front of the camera after taking a break from acting in the insufferably pompous Laurence Anyways. We know from the music that blasts in his car and his clothes that he doesn’t belong to the farm in any way except for a hairdo that seems like a miniature corn field on his head. This opening is promising because, while carefully curated, it seems rather less stylistically assaultive than one expects from a Dolan-directed film, even though it follows immediately from a familiarly designed scene in which he romantically scribes a letter of eulogy with ink on a tissue paper.
Tom is at the farm to
attend the funeral of his boyfriend, Guillaume, but when he arrives at the
residence cheekily numbered 69, he finds the massive house and the surrounding properties
all empty but for the cattle. Suspense seeps in and the scene continues for a
few minutes before we find him asleep at the kitchen table with an eerily still woman staring at him. This sets the tone for the underlying, creepy tension in
what is to come next, though the word ‘tone’
is used very generously here.
Dolan the director is,
thankfully, in more restrained mode here. This is less a work of a zealous
young director eager to imitate the filmmakers who inspire him than the work of
a man whose voice is evolving into a personal one. Although the thematic and
formal influence of films like Hitchcock’s Psycho
is immediately evident, Tom at the Farm is largely
free of stylistic affectations and self-indulgences that hindered most of his work previously. Dolan the actor is giving
his best performance to date as well. The more he is tormented by Francis,
Guillaume’s homophobic brother, and the farm’s daunting environment, the more
conflicted he becomes in his attraction to the mystery of the place.
