A peculiar neighbor offers hope to a recent widow who is struggling to raise a teenager who is unpredictable and, sometimes, violent.
Ratings
Curator score: 9.2/10
IMDb: 8.0/10
Letterboxd: 4.32/5
Rotten Tomatoes: 89%
Metacritic: 74
TMDB: 8.2/10
Director
Xavier Dolan
Production
Metafilms, Sons of Manual
Cast
Anne Dorval, Suzanne Clément, Antoine Olivier Pilon, Patrick Huard, Alexandre Goyette, Michèle Lituac, Viviane Pacal, Natalie Hamel-Roy, Isabelle Nélisse, Ted Pluviose, Pierre-Yves Cardinal, Reda Guerinik, Justin Laramée, Sabrina Bisson, Huguette Gervais, Vincent Fafard, Jean-Philippe Baril Guérard, Dominic Desnoyers, Guenièvre Sandré, Isabeau Blanche
Curator Review
Verdict
A raw, emotionally volatile family drama that mixes abrasive behavior with deep tenderness. Its formal boldness, especially the shifting aspect ratio and music cues, turns a domestic crisis into something urgent and unforgettable.
Best for
Viewers who like intense mother-son dramas
Fans of formally inventive indie cinema
People drawn to cathartic, emotionally devastating stories
Audiences who appreciate messy but loving family dynamics
Skip if
You want a calm, conventional drama
You dislike heightened emotion or erratic characters
You prefer tidy resolutions
You are put off by confrontational family conflict
Overview
Mommy is one of those films that feels both feral and carefully composed. Xavier Dolan stages a volatile household crisis with a mix of empathy, pop-music bravado, and visual invention that makes every emotional surge feel physical. The result is messy in the best way: a portrait of love that is exhausting, protective, funny, and sometimes unbearable.
Worth noting
What lingers most is the relationship at the center of it. The film refuses easy moralizing about parenting, illness, or violence; instead it keeps returning to the stubborn fact of attachment. Anne Dorval and Antoine Olivier Pilon give performances that can pivot from comedy to devastation in a breath, and Suzanne Clément adds a quiet counterweight that keeps the film from tipping into chaos.
Bottom line
The formal choices are not decoration. The shifting frame becomes a pressure valve, and the soundtrack choices feel like emotional shorthand for characters who cannot always say what they mean. It is a big, passionate movie about the limits of love, and it lands with real force.
Top Letterboxd reviews
Eli Hayes (5★) · 10064 likes
"Born to Die," like...born to Die,like Die, the character.he was born to her;he is her son. get it? get it!?
(this is me deflecting my pain)
andrea🌹 (5★) · 8340 likes
literally the only bad thing about this is having to tell locals that my favorite film is called "mommy"
meera (5★) · 7277 likes
THAT DREAM SEQUENCE BLEW ME THE FUCK AWAY.
maria (4★) · 4804 likes
*cries in 1:1 aspect ratio and lana del rey's born to die*
aaron (4.5★) · 4071 likes
not to be a total filmbro but everytime the aspect ratio changed I got literal chills everywhere on my body