In-between states: Sarah Polley's Take This Waltz and Xavier Dolan's Laurence Anyways

Vol.39,No.2(2013)

Jim Leach

https://doi.org/10.5817/BSE2013-2-6

Stable URL (handle):
http://hdl.handle.net/11222.digilib/130311

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Abstract
Two recent films by young Canadian directors, deal with characters entangled in in-between states. Margot in Sarah Polley's Take This Waltz is caught between her comfortable marriage and her passionate affair with a neighbour, while Laurence in Xavier Dolan's Laurence Anyways is more radically unsettled by his decision to become a woman. Both films lay themselves open to accusations of superficiality, by drawing on the conventions of romantic comedy (Take This Waltz) or by a flamboyantly melodramatic style (Laurence Anyways), but both work to unsettle easy assumptions about the relations of surface and depth, image and self, fantasy and bodily reality.

Keywords:
Sarah Polley; Xavier Dolan; national identity; sexuality; romantic comedy; melodrama; postmodernism; fantasy

Pages:
91–106
References

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