The Quebec director defends his first series for Canal +. But announces that he is retiring from his filmmaking career.
We always share with Xavier Dolan. And under control. The man is passionate but meticulous. He arrives wrapped in a down jacket—it’s a freezing Montreal winter—his perpetual teenage looks slung over his shoulder and eyes small from working late. He arranged to meet us at his favorite spot, the bar at the Four Seasons Hotel. He also snuggled into that little alcove along the bar to chat. The filmmaker weighs his words, lets the silence of reflection float. Sometimes rises, often ignites, particularly to provoke his turn to television. “The Night Laurier Gaudreault Woke Up,” a five-episode series co-produced by Canal+, is as much a boxed thriller as it is a family chronicle.
Paris match. “The Night Laurier Gaudreault Woke Up” uses all of the narrative codes of a series. But can’t we also see cinema there, in five medium-length films?
Xavier Dolan. It’s interesting that you feel while on my side I really wanted to pay tribute to the series I devoured when I was young and still watch. They are the ones that originally sparked my desire to make films. Not on the contrary. And apart from the length of the episodes, “The Night Where…” uncharacteristically respects all the codes of the big series, like those of HBO or others. Namely a specific narrative, twists and turns at each end of the episode. I didn’t have this aspiration to make cinema on TV. As a kid, I grew up watching TV series, Quebec soap operas that my mother used to watch when she was a teenager, Charmed, Buffy, or Smallville. Finally “The Sopranos”, “Six Feet Under” or “Homeland”. All my artistic tastes were forged with them. Even if it means conquering a certain snobbery, I’m more of a serial geek than a cinephile.
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Do you think it is television that influences creativity today?
Platforms and channels have made so many resources available to authors that cinema is logically inspired by this renewal. But I am and will always be a great supporter of cinema, I don’t want people to see it as a betrayal on my part. However, we have to face the facts: The viewers come less into the room. It’s cruel for artists. You spend several years of your life on projects that sometimes crumble into dust in a matter of weeks if no one comes to see them. Today I want to go where I can be the best, most efficient, and most generous with myself.
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“I have other passions that I would like to live out”
This passage on television certainly reveals your most mature work. Are you going to a different phase?
I would foolishly tell you that I’m getting older and that at 33 my interests and enthusiasm are changing. But that mainly has to do with the pandemic. It has isolated and hurt many people who have lost loved ones or sometimes even their sanity. I saw it as an opportunity for reflection and introspection. And question my life choices, personally or artistically. I’ve never taken as much time preparing a project as I did before chaining the films together.
The fear of the void?
No, that was how I worked, one film had to follow the other without really resting. This rhythm, I don’t want it anymore. And it clicked when I saw Michel Marc Bouchard’s play Laurier Gaudreault: I knew I wanted to do it.
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“A film always begins with a problem we want to solve: the inability to say we love someone, ostracism…”
Did the format catch on right away?
Yes. The room is behind closed doors where a family tears itself apart in front of the mother’s embalmed body. Evoking memories from a different era, each character gradually unveils tension and a heavy secret to bear. This evoked past, the 1990s, this Laurier Gaudreault that everyone is talking about but we know nothing about, I wanted to tell you about it right away, to capture it in pictures. It was left to my own imagination. And bringing characters to life on television for over five hours that might not be needed in the cinema.
They took on most of the actors in the play, they’re all great…
They are Quebec actors best known on television. They already had the precision of their characters, and as an actor, I also wanted to share their work, to join this troupe. And since few want to hire me to play, I do it myself. We forget, but gaming is my life, my first passion.
The difficulty of human or romantic relationships, the mother, grief or even violence…
Why do these themes keep coming up in your work?
You talk to me about topics, but I only talk about life. I would have made ten films about bank attacks, we could talk about issues. But there… I’m often asked about the character of mothers, but they are still one of the basic elements of human beings and there are as many different women as there are mothers on this earth. I see no repetition, only exploration, different each time.
These aren’t obsessions specific to young people in their 20s or 30s, are they?
No, but those are the ones I want to talk about. We always talk about problems that we finally want to solve. A film always starts with a problem… the inability to say you love someone, the violence in relationships, society’s ostracism of you, or even what you can expose others to.
The series is also more solar in that love can emerge victorious…
Indeed, this is the first time that I mention fraternity. If you felt that, I’m glad, because it’s about the power of love. Sometimes death separates, here it unites. Then maybe this solar side also comes from the classification of the series into two different epochs. These aren’t flashbacks, they really are two sides of the same story.
You made eight films in ten years. Finally, don’t you think it all happened too quickly?
no But today I feel tired. Finishing a film, promoting it, doesn’t interest me anymore. After “Matthias and Maxime” I wrote down a few ideas in 2019, but it didn’t work, I didn’t feel like it anymore. I think that, without necessarily realizing it, I no longer wanted the sacrifices involved in making a film, its preparation, post-production… I still wanted to tell stories, but no longer had the strength to immerse myself in deepen this manufacturing process.
Did it come on suddenly or gradually?
With the pandemic, people have lost a bit of their rigor. I see that especially in the post-production professions. And then, for this show to exist, I had to reinvest my royalties, touch nothing, and even borrow money from my dad. I’m still working today on revising the English subtitles to respect the nuances of the language. Why do I have to do this too? It becomes a thankless exercise that makes me bitter.
“I have to live to feel like telling stories again.”
How and where do you see yourself in a few years?
I do not know. I currently have a number of series projects in development that fascinate me. We’ll see if that catches on. Other than that, I don’t want to write or direct films because I feel like I’ve said it all. I need to rebuild myself, sort out some personal issues, take care of myself, spend time with my friends and family. I must live to regain the desire to tell stories.
But viewers want you to find that pleasure!
I will never do it to satisfy a request or respond to an inquiry. I want to act, I am fascinated by being an actor as well as dubbing films that I have been doing for years. Above all, I have other passions that I would like to live out. Interior design or architecture. Build the house of my dreams. The next phase of my life is not artistic but personal.
You have always expressed your admiration for Jean Cocteau. You even have a tattoo of him…
And two of his emblematic phrases still speak to me today: “The work is a sweat” and “I am bound to the impossible”…