Tom at the Farm

Xavier Dolan is an artist, using images for paint, his camera as a brush and the screen his canvas. Tom leaves Montreal to attend his boyfriend's funeral in a rural town where his boyfriend's conservative mother doesn't know her son was gay, and his mysterious brother hides deep secrets beneath layers of violence. Is _Tom at the Farm_ a horror film? An LGBTQ statement? A family drama? A humanist exploration of suffering? Yes to all of those, but what's most startling is that it succeeds equally well on every level. Authors write novels about loss, composers create symphonies to sadness and poets pen volumes of sonnets about love and yet Dolan creates the same effect in the two seconds of film it takes to show a grieving Tom climb into bed with his deceased lover's t-shirt over his face. That he can consistently channel so much emotion with such a subtle touch makes Xavier Dolan the best director of his generation and one of the greats in any other.