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For a director who has practically grown up at the Cannes Film Festival, people are eager to connect Xavier Dolan’s films into a body of work, as if each new release were a pre-planned chapter in a larger narrative he’d concocted years before.

But it isn’t that simple, says Dolan, the 30-year-old Quebec director whose newest film, Matthias et Maxime , screened here in competition for the Palme d’Or. It’s Dolan’s sixth trip to the Croisette; his first feature, J’ai tue ma mere (I Killed My Mother), premiered at Cannes when he was just 20.

“A lot of people say, ‘I recognize your themes; mothers and homosexuals,’” he says. “But mothers, we all have one, or had one. They’re not mothers, they’re women.” And homosexuals? “For me, this film is not gay. We never talk about heterosexual films. ‘Oh, I saw this great heterosexual love story. It’s between a man and a woman. It’s a little weird, but then after 15 minutes, you get used to it.’”

Matthias and Maxime does feature several mothers, though they’re peripheral to the story of two best friends (played by Dolan and Montreal comedian Gabriel D’Almeida Freitas) who get roped into sharing a kiss as part of a student film. This causes each – and particularly Freitas’s character, Matthias – to question his sexuality and feelings for the other, even as Matthias negotiates a relationship with his girlfriend, and Maxime prepares to leave for a two-year trip abroad.

Is friendship more reliable and strong than love? Is friendship love? That’s the question of the film for me.

“I don’t think that the two protagonists are aware that it’s gay love,” Dolan continues. “It’s love. And love comes knocking at your door after 25 years of friendship, knowing each other and being like brothers. For me, this is first and foremost a film about friendship. In the end … we are left with the certainty of only one thing. The one thing that you know … is that they’re still friends. Is friendship more reliable and strong than love? Is friendship love? That’s the question of the film for me.”

The movie marks a return to form for Dolan, whose last film, The Death and Life of John F. Donovan, was pronounced dead on arrival when it premiered last fall at the Toronto International Film Festival. It currently holds a 13 per cent score at RottenTomatoes and has recently limped into French cinemas. It has yet to be released in Canada.

Donovan was Dolan’s English-language debut with a cast that included Natalie Portman, Sarah Gadon, Kit Harington and Jessica Chastain, though the last was infamously cut from the film as it was edited down to two hours. Matthias and Maxime sees him working with smaller names – some familiar, some new – and in an amusing mix of French, English and that Quebec oddity, franglais or, if you like, Frenglish.

“Every generation has its notion of French and English,” says Dolan. “It’s important to include the notion of English as an invasive culture in Quebec.” In the film, the mothers barely understand English, while Dolan and his late-20-something costars switch more easily between the two, and 16-year-old Erika (Camille Felton) delivers a machine-gun mash-up that required both English and French subtitles in the press screening. “There’s already a huge chasm between us and Erika.”

Dolan has been making his way up the ranks of Cannes prizes since 2009, when J’ai tue ma mere won the Golden Camera for a first feature. It also scored the youth prize, as did Les amours imaginaires (Heartbeats) the next year. Then, in 2014, Dolan entered the Palme d’Or competition for the first time with Mommy , which took the Jury Prize (the unofficial third prize of the festival), in a tie with Jean-Luc Godard’s Goodbye to Language . And in 2016, Juste la fin du monde (It’s Only the End of the World) took the oddly named Grand Prize, or second place.

Critics have been kind but not effusive to Matthias and Maxime , suggesting it’s a good film but not a great one. Dolan characterizes it as a transition. “I’m not going to spend my whole life filming people who fight in the kitchen.” (Though ironically, there are two such scenes between Max and his mom.) “It’s more restrained,” he says. “I’m exploring new areas in half-tones; less dark, more pastel, more neutral, more gentle. I’m 30 years old now; I’m reaching the end of a decade I’ve mostly spent here in Cannes. After 10 years, I wanted to make a film about friendship.”

Asked to reflect upon his years at the festival – a day after Quentin Tarantino, 26 years his senior, was given a similar question – he talks of the naïveté with which he arrived here in 2009, “the victories, the disappointments, the rejections, the triumphs” since then, and the “very decisive moment in my life” when he served on the Palme d’Or jury in 2015. “It’s very pleasant to be a member of the jury,” he says, adding: “The 10 years have flown by. It’s been a huge joy.”

Chris Knight is reporting from Cannes until May 25.

Copyright Postmedia Network Inc., 2019