Diagonaldi Very well executed

CheerupSilver Very Cool!!!

StyleSk8r At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

Bluebell Alcock Ok... Let's be honest. It cannot be the best movie but is quite enjoyable. The movie has the potential to develop a great plot for future movies

l_rawjalaurence Set in a lonely farm in Quebec, TOM A LA FERME concerns the inner life of the eponymous central character (Xavier Dolan) mourning the death of his lover. He goes to his lover's family's isolated farm for the funeral, and there encounters the mother (Lise Roy) and her other son (Pierre-Yves Cardinal), neither of whom were aware of the dead lover's sexuality.The film concentrates on the gradual discovery by the family of their dead son's secret, and how it affects them. Francis is both horrified yet strangely affected; as the action unfolds, he develops an unnatural affection for Tom that is both sadistic and sexual. The mother seems to be unaware of what's happening around her, but perhaps she is just deliberately blinding herself to the truth as a means of self-protection. Tom finds himself imprisoned at the farm; even when his close acquaintance Sarah (Evelyne Brochu) comes to visit, he cannot contrive an effective escape.TOM A LA FERME concentrates on the ways in which people conceal their private inclinations, even from their nearest and dearest, and the damage that actually causes them. This is especially true of Francis, who emerges from the film as a seriously disturbed character, masking his sexual inadequacies beneath a veil of strength. Yet the process of self-discovery for all the characters is an enabling one - so much so that when Tom finally escapes from the farm, he does not appear very happy to have done so. The film ends with a shot of him re-entering the city of Montreal, the lighted skyscrapers flashing by outside his car windows, with his face set in an expressionless gaze as he drives. It seems that 'freedom' for him is nothing more than a form of imprisonment; by extension, therefore, his imprisonment at the farm was an opportunity to discover some form of freedom.Filmed on a series of bleak winter days in stark, washed-out colors, TOM A LA FERME is a searing psychological examination of sexualities and how they are often willfully concealed.

Sil I really fail to see the brilliance of the movie or of Xavier Dolan. Admittedly, it is the first movie of him I watched, and I will Watch others to try to understand why everybody think he is a Genius.On the story. Parents not aware of their child's sexuality and relatives trying to hide the truth. Really not original or special. It isn't enough to make a good film, perhaps a short. Other than that it's very slow, and there is little to feed on, be it images or music. And full of clichés such as the violent and rough farmer. It is also not clear why he feels the need to disfigure the brother's friend in a bar, nor why he wasn't jailed for it or nobody questioned him about it, neither brother nor parents nor police. Or was it fine for his brother to have someone disfigured for him in a bar?What strikes about Dolan is this movie, apart from the horrible hair color, is how he seems to like filling the screen most of the time. I hadn't a stopwatch, but it feels like he is filling the screen, mostly his head, 50-70 % of the time or more. Are we supposed to be ecstatic about the acting?All in all, this is a movie, that in my opinion, one can afford not to watch.Let's just say that nothing strikes as interesting or remarkable, from the story to the photography to the original soundtrack. Acting is OK.

Francisco Carmona I just watched this movie as part of the 56th Muestra International de Cine at the Cineteca Nacional, in Mexico City. As I noted in the synopsis, the director is also the protagonist, something that I don't consider sane for a movie. But the storyline seemed attractive. And my intuition was right: an excessive use of extreme close-ups, not helping to the narrative, but making it boring and exasperating. And yes, most of the close-ups, specially the long-lasting ones, were on the main character. I don't know the original text (I know it's a theatrical text), to make a difference between failures in the original story and the version of the director. The characters are interesting. They're strong. But I couldn't understand the basis of their actions. There is a scene when characters are doing this, and the next they're changing, and then they're going back, and then they make a new thing... The only well-presented character is a secondary one, appearing as much as 15 minutes. The actress in the role of the mother makes a very good work, but it's diluted by the failures in the story and the lack of strength in the work of the co-protagonists. At the end, I found the director being the protagonist, also made the selection of the music, the scenery, the dialogs (interestingly, the playwright helped with the dialogs). And it made sense with the result. A fragmented work, a complete lack of unity.

koen_smit I was one of the lucky people to see this movie tonight at the Dutch festival 'Roze Filmdagen' (Pink Film Days) in Amsterdam before it will hit the art-house cinemas here in april. It was the opening film and the festival director Werner Borkes made clear in his opening speech that he felt like a very lucky man to be able to show us this movie already. I must say, the expectations were high and growing and most of the time high expectations are hard to live up to. But not this time.Canadian wonder child Xavier Dolan (born in '89) adapted the play by Michel Marc Bouchard, who co-wrote the script for the movie. Dolan is also playing the lead character Tom, who visits the family of his deceased lover for the funeral. The mother and homophobic brother live on a farm and when Tom tries to leave after the funeral, the brother doesn't let him. What follows is a psychological warfare between the characters and the big question is: will Tom be able to leave and does he want to…The movie is tensed from beginning till the end and the music (with a lot of strings) is used well to accompany and strengthen the secluded and somewhat claustrophobic life on the farm. Besides the tension, there is also a lot of humor in the situations and dialog that seems to turn on a dime into an awkward situation for Tom. Especially the part where Tom is talking over dinner about the so-called girlfriend Sara with the mother, who doesn't have a clue what Tom's relationship with her son is, and the brother is a memorable scene. All the actors are great and deliver the lines from their toes. Xavier Dolan is especially one to keep an eye on, this is already his third movie in his 24 years young life and he knows how to tell a great story the right way.