PODCAST: Xavier Dolan

Montreal-based actor and filmmaker Xavier Dolan was only 20 when his semi-autobiographical 2009 feature debut, I Killed My Mother, won three awards in the Directors' Fortnight section at Cannes. A talented whippersnapper to say the least, the not-yet-22-year-old Dolan again wrote, directed and stars in the hip romantic drama-cum-farce Heartbeats (Les Amours imaginaires), which premieres in limited release this Friday:

Francis (Xavier Dolan) and Marie (Monia Chokri) are close friends. One day, during a lunch, they meet Nicolas (Niels Schneider), a young man from the country newly arrived in town. As one rendezvous leads troublingly to another—whether real or imagined, the signs are all bad—each of the two friends slides deeper into obsessive fantasies around the same object of desire. And the deeper they slide, the more their once cast-iron friendship begins to crack under the pressure of competing for the new kid on the block.

Xavier Dolan's second film, HEARTBEATS, is a study of the fall into love. We follow each stage of the typical love story’s progress—it starts with a meeting and ends in tears. The film reveals a fundamentally simple intrigue that careers through a whole gamut of poetic craziness: passions unleashed, expectations, sorrow, humiliation and, finally, loneliness.

In the downtown Manhattan lobby of the Mercer Hotel, Dolan and I sat down to discuss love, style, his amazing coiffure, how he really feels about film criticism, and dubbing the voice of a South Park character for French-Canadian television.

To listen to the podcast, click here. (15:32)

Podcast Music
INTRO: Dalida: "Bang Bang"
OUTRO: The Knife: "Pass This On"

Posted by ahillis at February 21, 2011 12:54 PM