This was my first movie experience with Dolan as a director although at this young age, he's already had four others with critical acclaim - I Killed My Mother, Heartbeats, Lawrence Anyways and Mommy mentioned above. On top of his directing talent, he is also an experienced writer, editor, producer and costume designer. It's a very dark movie about a gay guy Tom (played by Dolan himself) from Montreal visiting his dead lover's family for the first time in rural Quebec. His visit became a discovery of surprise, horror and manipulation. Dolan also wrote the screenplay by adapting a play by Michel Marc Bouchard.
There's definitely a Hitchcockian supspense throughout the film created by Dolan's masterful delay of our visual image of the characters. So we saw the backs of the characters or their hands when they first appeared on screen. Dolan did not reveal the faces of his principal characters until their dialogue with Tom enabled us to imagine for a few seconds what they could have looked like physically.
The musical score by renowned composer Gabriel Yared, who made his film debut in 1980 with the score for Jean-Luc Godard's Every Man For Himself, played an essential role in making this movie an ultimate thriller. Ironically, Jean-Luc Godard also shared the Jury Prize Award with Dolan at Cannes. As I was viewing the movie, I couldn't help but compared it to its previous genre as a play. The differentiating factors that made it such a creepy movie were definitely the music, the country-farm scenes, the stand-alone farm house in adverse weather, and the fresh blood from the cattle.
The cast was also superb, particularly Pierre-Yves Cardinal, who played Francis, the brother of Tom's deceased lover; and Lise Roy, who played the mother Agathe. It's also interesting that both Roy and Evelyne Brochu, who played Sara, also performed the same characters in the original play.
It's also obvious that Dolan is not a fan of America. From the bomber jacket worn by Francis to the music during the violent scenes, Dolan was telling us that all violence stemmed from our southern neighbour.
My favourite scene was the sexually-charged tango scene at the farm - it made you question the sexuality of Francis and who's really the manipulator here! I didn't like the film's ending at all. Many directors left the conclusion for the audience to figure out, but the final scene was strangely abrupt in this film.
I don't think Tom At The Farm is a masterpiece, but you might want to see it if you're curious about why Dolan is the current 'it' boy in Europe!
