Irritating Canadian director Xavier Dolan, 34, has announced that he’s quitting filmmaking.
El País has quoted him saying “I no longer have the desire or strength to commit myself to a project for two years that barely anyone sees…I put too much passion into it to have so many disappointments…it makes me wonder if my filmmaking is bad, and I know it’s not.”
HE reaction #1: Don’t be a quitter…keep at it, never say die, refine your game. HE reaction #2: What’s Dolan going to do, become a bartender or a travel guide? He could direct more Adele music videos until inspiration taps him in the shoulder. No respect for guys who throw in the towel. HE reaction #3: I’ve never really liked a Dolan film. The best that has happened (when I saw Mommy in 2014) is that I felt a certain respect or tolerance.
The French-speaking Dolan was born on 3.20.89. Last May another major-league, French-language film star quit the business — Adele Haenel, who is also 34 and was born one month earlier than Dolan.
Posted on 5.22.16: In a sharply phrased piece about Sunday’s Cannes Film Festival awards and particularly Xavier Dolan‘s It’s Only The End of the World, which won the festival’s Grand Prix (or second place) award, L.A. Times critic Justin Chang has let go Sam Peckinpah-style.
“Quebec’s Xavier Dolan, the 27-year-old world-cinema enfant terrible, pretty much horrified the press audience by inexplicably winning the runner-up Grand Prix for It’s Only the End of the World.
“In my 11 years of attending Cannes I cannot recall a worse jury decision than this one. A badly shot, shrilly performed and all-around excruciatingly misjudged dysfunctional-family torture session that felt far longer than its 97-minute running time, World was by far the least endurable film in competition (and that includes Sean Penn’s dreadful but dreadfully entertaining The Last Face).
“Far inferior to Mommmy, the director’s 2014 jury-prize winner, World failed to win over even Dolan’s many fans, and I have counted myself among them on more than one occasion.”
