It’s hard not to be swept up by ‘Matthias and Maxime’. This is a film made with such love and care, sincerity and grace, showcasing everything that makes Xavier Dolan such an arresting filmmaker and distilled into their purest form. What made my heart soar was in how it laid bare how complex human relationships are, how pointless such binaries as gender and sexuality are, how love between two people is greater than simply defined as friendship or romance. ‘Matthias and Maxime’ refuses to play into such simplistic categories, instead celebrating the wonder of love and human connection without the need for them. Maybe some viewers will try and pigeonhole the protagonists as “gay“ rather than just two people in love to make themselves feel more comfortable, much like the bi-erasure in many responses to <a href=“/article/review-call-me-by-your-name-beautiful-beyond-description“>‘Call Me By Your Name’</a>, so pointlessly obsessed are we with useless outdated labels, but that would be such a loss to their experience of the richness of this film. ‘Matthias and Maxime’ is a quiet triumph, a tender love story beautifully told, a reminder of how deep the rivers of love can go, how violent travelling them can be and how so very worth the journey is.
- Daniel Lammin
Read Daniel's full article...
https://www.maketheswitch.com.au/article/review-matthias-and-maxime-a-magical-film-on-the-complexity-of-friendship-and-love
I was rather disappointed by this effort from Xavier Dolan. Perhaps writing/editting and starring in the film robbed him too much of objectivity when it came to actually watching this bit of a non-story. He portrays "Max", a young French-Canadian man who is about to emigrate to Australia. At a party with his childhood friends, he and handsome best pal Matt (Gabriel D'Almeida Freitas) get lumbered with starring in a video being made by one of their number's pesky younger sister. The scene involved the two of them kissing - something neither had done (as an adult) with a man before. What ensues is a slow, deliberately so, depiction of the complications that this kiss has on their relationship. "Matt" has a long term girlfriend, so his reconciliation with his "new" feelings for his friend take on a different guise from those of the single "Max" who has issues with his recovering addict mother. Sadly, though, too much of those repercussions are presumed on us by the director and not demonstrated to the audience. It doesn't need to be a cheesy traditional romance, nor a sex fest, but we are left to imagine or envisage that they want each other only because we know that's what the film is about - not because we are presented with much tangible, or even implied, sense of desire. Indeed the others in their group more readily flirt and banter than the two in the title. It doesn't have a beginning, middle and end - it just has a middle. A rather interestingly filmed and quite well put together middle, but a middle nonetheless. Certainly worth watching - I think Dolan has something about him - but I wanted more from the characters and the story - as it is I just felt like a rather unsatisfied observer.
As much as I like the work of Xavier Dolan, this film was very disappointing. It was predictable, dull, and just not showing anything new or creative. I look forward to his next fantastic film.
What a colossal waste of time and film. First of all, this is not really a gay movie, it is over 2 hours long and there is less than 2 minutes of gay content. This is about a group of friends, of which the two main stars are poorly cast age-wise, who hang out. The two main guys seem to have an attraction to each other, but except for just a few seconds on screen, it's not acted on nor discussed. We do however get to sit through one guys business meetings that have nothing to do with the story at all and we get to see the other guy mopping his floor before he moves, sadly that was the most thought out plot line of the entire movie! Again, another 'gay' movie with female nudity and no male, they didn't even take their shirts off. No offense to women, but if I'm watching gay cinema, I don't want to see that, just as I'm sure if a woman was watching lesbian cinema she wouldn't want to see male nudity.
