I Killed My Mother

I Killed My Mother (J'ai tué ma mère, 2009) is Xavier Dolan's debut drama, and you can watch it online on iFILM. A teenage boy loves and loathes his own mother in the same breath, and the feeling eats away at him a little more each day.

His mother Chantale works herself ragged, lives alone after her husband walked out, and can't reach her son except through nagging and worry. Hubert, gifted and raw-nerved, is irritated by everything about her: the tacky clothes, the way she eats, the clumsy small talk. He wants out from under her watch; she isn't ready to let go. What follows is a quiet trench war of kitchen blowups and brief, fragile truces.

Dolan wrote the script at seventeen and then directed, produced and starred in it himself, taking three prizes in the Directors' Fortnight at Cannes. Anne Dorval's Chantale is reason enough to watch: not a villain, not a martyr, just a worn-down woman doing her best. It's nervy, intimate work about how hard it is to love the people closest to you. Stream I Killed My Mother (2009) online on iFILM.