"Laurence Anyways" is the third feature film of Canadian young director Xavier Dolan, and it is also Dolan's most ambitious and epic work since filming. Compared with the previous work, the film no longer has such a strong autobiographical color. However, Dolan cleverly extracted the commonalities of human emotions from the special fringe characters—the inner core behind those passionate love, disputes, vacillation, deterioration and reconstruction, thus returning the theme to his most handy "Dolan aesthetics": faith and Chase those "impossible loves".
The film’s narrative spans ten years and uses flashbacks. Dolan’s work can be described as a "long narrative poem". However, the story only focuses on the point of transgenderness. Dolan cleverly and keenly observes how the relationship between two people evolves, deteriorates, rebuilds, and erupts over time. This makes "Laurence Anyways" emotionally universal.
The music of the film is not an accessory, it will always be an important part of the Javier-Dolan film. In this more ambitious work, closely following the protagonist’s more than ten-year ups and downs in his life, there are more than 20 pieces of music on different occasions, from electronic, rock to jazz, classical symphony, and it always rises at the right time. However, it has become the language of communication with the audience and the soul of the film.
"Laurence Anyways" has an eclectic film soundtrack, including classical music, nineties golden songs and Quebec pop music. The audience can clearly perceive the existence of music in the movie, especially in the early stage of the movie. In the scenes that are full of emotions, the music still conveys excessive emotion.
The film is like decorative art. From fine arts, costumes to character modeling, looking at the gorgeous wallpaper, the matching of costumes and the hair colors and small accessories of the actors, this is simply a feast of colors. Dolan once again combines editing, costume, screenwriter and director. In fact, he is fully capable of cross-border fashion design and interior design. The whole movie is full of beauty everywhere, especially the slow motion of surreal mood, it is simply too beautiful. Dolan’s obsession with close-ups is the same as his classic slow motion processing, color matching, etc., as if they are his personal labels. Although these are not his original creations but are natural choices, this is exactly what he was used for. Call it a genius reason. Naturally, it makes people feel that the whole style and aesthetics are all in their own right.
