Luca Guadagnino Is "A Bit Suspicious" Of Xavier Dolan

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Xavier Dolan might be the most talked about director whose films barely have any U.S. distribution. Over a year since it debuted at the Cannes Film Festival, “It’s Only The End Of The World” is still without a U.S. release, while previous efforts like “Tom At The Farm,” “Laurence Anyways,” and “I Killed My Mother” all received very limited engagements. Only “Mommy” managed a bigger footprint at the arthouse in North America. Still, everyone likes to talk about Dolan, which is why a two-year old interview that touches upon the filmmaker is making the rounds.

Back in 2015, Luca Guadagnino, the helmer behind this year’s sensational “Call Me By Your Name,” shared his reservations about the work of Dolan, and his distaste that “Mommy” had walked away with the Cannes Jury Prize that year.

“I’m a bit suspicious of Xavier Dolan, for one reason: he does too many films. I do not believe in hyperactivity. I like the idea of reflection,” he told Purple Diary. “I think ‘Mommy,’ for instance, is a typical post-Almodóvar female drama, shot in the clever, intelligent way of today, with an awareness of the iPhone generation. Is it a gimmick having to do with the tool? Or does the tool affect the way the images are put together? I was very upset when ‘Mommy’ — what a title! — was awarded the Jury Prize in Cannes. It basically contradicted Godard’s lesson that such an orgy of images is the end of language and then was rewarded for being an orgy of images.”

It’s a bit odd that Guadagnino is riffing on Dolan’s pace, when he quickly followed “A Bigger Splash” with “Call Me By Your Name,” and has “Suspiria” coming next year.

At any rate, Guadagnino conceded that maybe an “orgy of images” is the language of contemporary cinema, and he might be out of touch.

“Possibly. I guess that makes me a grumpy old man, and maybe Xavier Dolan is right,” he said. Guadagnino closes his thoughts with a genuine curiosity about where Dolan will go next, and how history might regard his work, considering it breaks free from adhering to any kind of rules established by cinematic canon.

“….moving forward, would it represent something more than just being an outburst of desire in moving images? I wonder if Xavier Dolan or anyone who does the same is really thinking about what it means to create an image in motion? But maybe I’m wrong. We’ll see!” Guadagnino said.

The irony here is that two years after these comments were made, Dolan seems pretty jazzed about “Call Me By Your Name.”