Quartile rating: 8/10 · 1 rating
The story of an impossible love between a woman named Fred and a transgender woman named Laurence who reveals her inner desire to become her true self.
Xavier Dolan's sweeping 168-minute romantic epic is visually audacious and emotionally operatic, with Melvil Poupaud and Suzanne Clément delivering commanding, nuanced performances. The cinematography is distinctively lush and stylized — bursts of surrealism, vivid color, and fashion-forward imagery make it unmistakably Dolan. The subject matter (a trans woman's self-discovery across a decade) was handled with unusual sensitivity and complexity for 2012, and the film's tone — melodrama elevated to near-mythological scale — is singular. The plot, while ambitious in scope, occasionally sprawls and loses momentum across its runtime, and the ending, though emotionally resonant, feels somewhat inconclusive rather than cathartic.