THE FILM:
The Soviet Union and its followers believed in a utopian ideal of forced equality. Under its government controlled and mandated share and share alike policy, everyone would work, everyone would have the same opportunities, and no one would be more powerful or prominent than anyone else. Yes, there would have to be those in charge, making sure these core conceits were enforced, but for the most part, the factory drone or the long suffering farmer would be no more or less important than the suited man sitting in the Parliament. Of course, none of that was true. The minute any individual or group of individuals seized power in a place like Russia, Romania, or Poland, they would immediately set themselves up as the bourgeoisie that Marxism rallied against, their elaborate lifestyles often in direct contradiction to the value they were spewing in speeches and proclamations. When he was overthrown by his own people in 1989, Romanian General Secretary of the Communist Party, Nicolae Ceausescu was considered such a monster, responsible for unthinkable genocide and internal horrors that warranted a speedy trial and execution. He also lived like a king in a realm populated by paupers. Even today, many of his most disturbing acts are just being uncovered.

So it’s with great interest that one walks into the documentary entitled The Autobiography of Nicolae Ceausescu, a fascinating compilation of State-sponsored footage from the tyrant’s 24 years in power. Indeed, from 1965 to his death in ’89, the more or less dictator of Romania made it a point of polishing up his country’s image. The result was an almost obsessive filming of his professional life and routine. When the National Archives were finally opened to the public, director Andrei Ujică saw an opportunity to expose the blatant hypocrisy in Ceausescu’s regime and used his kangaroo court trial as a bookend to more haunting, happier times. Following his life in office, we see a man melded with the pro-Red pomp and circumstance ordered by his Soviet overseers as well as someone with his own agenda within the international arena. After walking through most of this initial rise, we see Ceausescu entertaining a succession of world leaders. Everyone from de Gaulle to Nixon show up, as do many members of the Iron Curtain crew. Ceausescu even travels to North Korea to witness one of those eye popping human displays that only a marginalized people under a suppressed regime can promote without criticism.

The visions here are stunning, if slightly inert. We see the man obsessing over building and construction, huge dioramas of a future Romania spread out like presents for a child at Christmas. Ceausescu even tours works in progress, looking over the outsized opulence like a proud papa. One thing the Soviet style countries could handle was the sterile, featureless look of a post-modern, post-Capitalism society. All the edifices are gray or white, glass and metal making up for any real architectural personality. These were the future vistas, the way in which the Communists saw their countries against the decadence of the West. On the other hand, they are also a massive drain on the country’s economy, so much so that Ceausescu had to borrow from around the world to fulfill his vision. This resulted in an indebtedness that occasionally cost the people their place. In order to try and solve this dilemma, Ceausescu exported most of the country’s resources to try and balance the books. Such shortages and restrictions laid the seeds for his eventual overthrow.

Yet The Autobiography of Nicolae Ceausescu suffers from a lack of outrage. Since this is the State-sponsored resource of information on the man, there’s no hints of his horrible genocide, no inkling of the workhouses and orphanages were enemies of the country were housed in horrific conditions. There are no signs of the secret police who murdered millions. The opening has the leader accused of orchestrating a mass murder in a Romanian village of Timisoara, but we never see any sign of this. Hunting wildlife is one thing. Seeing people slaughtered in the name of politics is another. As the aged man and his harried wife deny each and every accusation, we wait for the counterbalance, to see the actual images that both are so vehemently speaking against. But Ujică never offers it. In fact, to do so would go against his desire to stay within the parameters of the archive. One imagines a more devastating film with the various investigative news sources and post-execution material edited in. What we end up with is indeed eye-opening, but it’s not shattering. Without your own knowledge of the subject, the extravagance on display is rather empty.

THE DVD:
When you consider that the filmmakers had to pour through hours of archival footage, that they were mixing and matching formats (videos, newsreels, state-sponsored shoots, and other visual documentation) as well as dealing with age issues and an overall need to focus the approach, the tech spec results are fairly impressive. The 1.78:1 anamorphic image is colorful, sharp, and almost pristine in places. We get a real sense of the pageantry and the pathetic grasp for attention surrounding much of this material. The sound situation is a bit different. Sure, the old aural science leaves a lot to be desired, especially in a backwards Soviet Bloc situation, but the mix has been cleaned up a bit so that there are few scratches, pops, or moments of distortion. The subtitles are not removable, by the way, so if you don’t like having to read along with your movie, you’re stuck (of course, you’d have to be able to speak Romanian as well…). As for added content, there is a trailer and DVD-Rom access to information on the various political players on display. That’s it. Frankly, the film could use some context, explaining the importance of the sometimes silent events playing out in front of us.

FINAL THOUGHTS:
The Autobiography of Nicolae Ceausescu is one of those powerful films that make you eager for more: more information on the man’s specific crimes; more of a counterbalance between the propaganda offered by the State and the truth captured by other cameras; more insight into the leader’s personal problems and provocations. As it stands, it’s an incomplete picture, a Recommended experience but one that only provides a portion of the real story. Sometimes, the party line explains it all. In the case of The Autobiography of Nicolae Ceausescu, it’s only a small fraction of the truth.

Want more Gibron Goodness Come to Bill’s TINSEL TORN REBORN Blog (Updated Frequently) and Enjoy! Click Here

THE MOVIE:

Gomorrah director Matteo Garrone applies his meticulous, flowing style to much lighter fare this time around in Reality, a social satire about a thoroughly modern condition: one man’s obsessive fantasy about being a reality TV star.

Fish seller and small-money swindler Luciano (Aniello Arena) lives in Naples with his extended family, where he hustles to make ends meet. Considered the funny one of his clan, he is pushed by his daughters into trying out for “Big Brother” when they are holding auditions at the local mall. After Luciano gets a callback and goes through the second stage of auditions, he becomes convinced he’s made the show and tells everyone so. The longer he has to wait, however, the more paranoid he becomes, even as his belief that he will join the cast grows stronger.

There are strange turns ahead, as Luciano goes off the deep end. Convinced his past sins are what’s causing his roadblock to stardom, he tries turning over a new leaf, transforming himself into a 21st-century apostle. Garrone, who collaborated on his script with three other writers, follows Luciano every step of the way, observing instead of judging, letting the actions speak for themselves or sometimes giving baffled friends and family the spotlight so they can play straight man in Luciano’s tragicomedy. As with Gomorrah, Garrone stages long takes, allowing the action to occur in a semblance of real time. He also uses real places and real people, which here allows him to highlight the division between the common populace and the so-called celebrities we exalt for no apparent reason.

Cinephiles will appreciate the nods to Fellini, who certainly would have had a field day in the current showbiz landscape, but they’ll also be saddened by seeing the fabled Cinecitta Studios giving over so much of its real estate to the “Big Brother” house. From Ben-Hur and La Dolce Vita to girls in bikinis brushing their teeth. Well, then again, Fellini might approve.

THE DVD

Video:
The full-color transfer of Reality is presented at the original 2.35:1 aspect ratio. The widescreen image is first-rate, with strong detail and resolution as well as vivid colors. Marco Onorato’s photography plays with the delicate balance between Technicolor illusions and the gaudy reality that sometimes mirrors cinematic excess, and his careful choices are rendered with brilliant clarity on this DVD.

Sound:
The film’s Italian soundtrack has been remixed in 5.1 surround, with a second 2.0 stereo option. While we often tend to think of loud action movies when thinking of all the ways sound can be used to enhance viewing, there is also much that should be said for a movie like Reality, that uses small touches and ambient noise to create a convincing aural atmosphere, adding to the believability of what we see on screen. The Dolby mix here is nicely done, utilizing all the speakers and the full space of the room they occupy. The quiet moments are balanced well against Alexandre Desplat’s excellent score.

Optional subtitles include English and French.

Extras:
The package designers make full use of Oscilloscope’s well-known multi-faceted package design, decorating the cover and fold-out interior sleeve with new paintings featuring scenes from the film.

There are lots of informative extras here, including a detailed, 23-minute interview (in Italian) with director Matteo Garrone where he outlines his intentions of the film, the writing and the casting, the shooting technique, and more. We also see the director and his crew at work in the 20-minute documentary Dreams are Reality, while a second documentary, Inside Reality, looks specifically at the music, effects, and production design, giving us just over 9 minutes of scoring sessions, artwork, etc.

There are four deleted scenes, most about a minute in length, with the longest one being over 3-minutes and featuring Luciano in the “Big Brother” confessional. The most interesting might be the traffic jam clip, though, just because it is so beautifully lit and shot.

Perhaps of particular interest, though, is the 13-minute profile of Aniello Arena, who famously shot the film while on work leave from prison. The piece focuses on his roles with the prison’s acting company, which he joined in 2001, giving the gangster a new lease on life. There’s lots of footage of rehearsals and performances from these productions.

Finally, there is a theatrical trailer included.

FINAL THOUGHTS:
The latest from Matteo Garrone, Reality, is a marvelous dissection of modern celebrity culture and the way the false promise of television success can cause big dreams to fizzle for an average person. Acted with equal parts audacity and empathy by first-time cinema star Aniello Arena, Reality follows one man’s quest to get on “Big Brother,” and the self-delusion that just might land him there. It’s a movie that is grand in scope, and meticulously designed to be larger than life, but that’s also personal and intimate. Highly Recommended.

Jamie S. Rich is a novelist and comic book writer. He is best known for his collaborations with Joelle Jones, including the hardboiled crime comic book You Have Killed Me, the challenging romance 12 Reasons Why I Love Her, and the 2007 prose novel Have You Seen the Horizon Lately, for which Jones did the cover. All three were published by Oni Press. His most recent project is the superhero series It Girl and the Atomics and the futuristic romance A Boy and a Girl with Natalie Nourigat. Follow Rich’s blog at Confessions123.com.

THE FILM:
Cabaret said it best – “Money makes the world go round.” Don’t believe so Imagine your life without it, right now (or, perhaps, you’re like everyone else on the planet and cash – and the lack thereof – is all you ever think about). Pretty dour, right No being able to pay one’s way through life didn’t always come with a case of clinical depression and a gross of Pepto Bismal. Before the bottom line became an obsession for every single soul (and the soulless corporations) in our society, art, experience, wisdom, joy, freedom, creativity, and general human ‘being’ were valued just as highly, if not more so. Now, if it can’t be banked or doesn’t end up in a (significant) paycheck, it’s deemed worthless and without meaning in our world. So it makes sense that a movie like Penny Pinchers would challenge the status quo when it comes to dosh. In this light, often insightful dramatic comedy from Korea, we learn that a skin flint without focus is just as bad as a spendthrift without prospects. A happy medium is much, much better – for one’s senses and for their bank account as well.

Ji-Woong (Song Joong-ki) needs money. He is virtually unemployable. He usually gets an allowance from his mother or gets by on his wits, but right now, he is flat busted and has just been kicked out of his apartment for overdue rent. Of course, he doesn’t want to change his ways, his free spirited lifestyle requiring lots of disposable income – which he never seems to have. As luck would have it, a neighbor named Hong-Sil (Han Ye-seul) is willing to take him in…on one condition. Ji-Woong has listen to everything she says and agree to it. The point is to help her save as much money as she can, mostly through scams that are relatively legal and almost victim free. At first, he is a bit skeptical and doesn’t like how Hong-Sil is obsessed with saving. But when he learns her reasons why (her father nearly destroyed the family with his gambling debts – and still comes scrounging for scratch), he agrees to cooperate. Besides, he needs the money, and it’s not long before the two develop a cutesy kind of romantic respect for each other.

Penny Pinchers is an odd film. The first half seems settled on being a bizarre Asian goof with vignettes exposing the unusual ways our leads make money. Unfortunately, a lot of their antics get lost in the (non)translation. Sure, we snicker when they turn the lights off at a busy badminton court and then sell glow-in-the-dark shuttlecocks to the harried players, or when the duo salvage junk from abandoned houses and sell is as authentic antiques, but for the most part, the movie loses even the most considered Western viewer. The culture in Korea is different, as are the language barriers. The actors will look at some sign and nod with cheerful agreement. They will weep in a movie and we can’t share that experience since none of the film is subtitled. Since we don’t know what it says, and there is no translation of the words, labels, or tags, we are left wondering what the fuss was about. Equally unnerving is the way in which the characters cater to obvious cliche – at least, at first. Ji-Woong is a douche, the kind of guy who manages to survive because everyone misconstrues his nonchalance for confidence.

Hong-Sil, on the other hand, eventually overcomes her typical RomCom typecasting. Sure, she’s cute and perky, but there is also a veil of darkness over her personality which plays against the proposed lightness of the material. When we hear the story about her dad, it’s heartbreaking. At least Hong-Sil’s problems come from a general laziness and a mother whose restaurant was wrecked by a wild boar. It’s this wild inconsistencies in tone and storytelling that will throw most non-Korean audiences off. We expect things to be all goofy or all grim and Penny Pinchers is neither. Instead, it’s a weird window into a society we still know very little about, of a heritage and a lifestyle which mimics most of the West while wildly deviating into places our young people have yet to discover. It’s a clever film that clearly wants to showcase the importance of personal, not net, worth, and argues against the consumerism it otherwise embraces. Money make indeed make the world go round. It can also make a movie go wrong. For the most part, Penny Pinchers avoids real artistic penury.

THE DVD:
This is a technically proficient DVD. The 2.35:1 anamorphic widescreen image is colorful, bright, and loaded with detail. Some Korean films have a cartoony approach to their visuals and some of that is present here as well. Director Kim Jung-Hwan has a good eye for the location and the logistics of the narrative, and this digital presentation does a decent job of capturing it all. As for the sound, the Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround mix doesn’t do much with the back speakers. In fact, in this dialogue heavy film, the only time the channels are challenged is when the Asia equivalent of indie rock is used in the score. Where this release really shines is in the added content department. We get the typical trailers, but there is also an interesting making-of, a Q&A with both Song Joong-ki and Han Ye-seul, as well as footage from the premiere and a press conference. When you consider mainstream Hollywood hits often get less than this in the extras department, this DVD is pretty well tricked out.

FINAL THOUGHTS:
Penny Pinchers is the kind of film you see Tinseltown Execs soiling themselves over. One can only imagine that someone, somewhere, in a studio office overflowing with scripts, is trying to find a way to bring this tale to American audience sans all those troubling subtitles and quirky cultural cues (we’re looking at you, Harvey Weinstein). For those interested in the Korean take on debt and life’s destinies, this movie is for you. Others should really Rent It since it’s often foreign concerns will only confuse them.

Want more Gibron Goodness Come to Bill’s TINSEL TORN REBORN Blog (Updated Frequently) and Enjoy! Click Here

The Show:
The British seem to have a knack for crafting better than average crime drama, particularly on television. (I may have said this somewhere before.) And when dramatic heavyweight Martin Shaw is in the lead, it’s difficult for a show to fail. Such it is with George Gently: Series 5, in which Shaw reprises his role as the stoic police inspector in Sixties England. It’s not an unreserved success, but it is really, really good.

Inspector Gently is joined by the still sloppy and arrogant, but essentially good hearted, Detective Sergeant Bacchus (Lee Ingleby) and PC Taylor (Simon Hubbard). They investigate crimes, mostly murder but other serious offenses such as kidnapping as well, in the turbulent and changing milieu of the 1960’s. Bacchus is very much the “new man”, wanting to fit into to the new moral and intellectual landscaped. While Gently is of the old guard: not very expressive, calm, studied, principled and straightforward, but with a deep well of compassion and understanding to call upon.

George Gently has always delved into the darker side of human nature, and as a show that deals with the worst impulses of humanity, the urge to murder and worse, it certainly can’t be helped. However, it seems that Series 5 is a bit darker and more cynical than it has been in the past, with less room for a glimmer of redemption to leak through. Particularly bleak is the strong anti-adoption theme in the episode “The Lost Child”, in which the single mothers and their families are innocent angels, and all those involved on the adoption side are lying, manipulative, greedy baddies. George Gently can be counted on having one “preachy” episode per series, and perhaps they’ve just gone a tad overboard on this one, but the tone is a bit off putting. It’s not that the episode is poorly executed, or performed (Helen Baxendale gives perhaps the best performance of Series 5 as the grieving adoptive mother), but it’s hard to puzzle out the why behind the creative choices.

Gently and Bacchus deal with racism, class conflict, corruption, the odd mobster or gangster, and various other immoralities and wickedness. Gently is mostly unflappable, until he is accused of taking bribes and falsifying evidence, and even murder, and has to sort out his enemies from his friends, which turns out to be a difficult task. Bacchus is mostly rash and callow, though perhaps he’s learning something from his years under Gently’s tutelage. The episodes are all well produced, with compelling characters, and sufficiently tricky mysteries to satisfy the fans. Series 5 consists of four episodes on four discs. Below is a list of episodes, with descriptive text as provided on the discs:

Gently Northern Soul
The murder of a black teenager has Gently and Bacchus seeking her killer in a community where racism is never far from the surface. The detectives encounter local prejudice and anti-immigrant sentiment but discover that there may have been other motivations for the crime.

Gently with Class
After a car turns up in a river with a drowned young woman in the passenger seat but no driver, the detectives follow the trail to the home of local aristocrats. Bacchus resents the family, and Gently suspects his sergeant may be crossing the line to get a conviction.

The Lost Child
When an adopted baby is snatched from her crib, suspicion initially falls on the birth mother, who may be having second thoughts about giving up her child. But after a ransom demand turns out to be blackmail, Gently turns his attentions closer to home.

Gently in the Cathedral
Upon his release from prison, a vicious career criminal from Gently’s London days seeks revenge on the detective. Allegations about the inspector start to fly and many people

THE FILM 

There’s a scene in Xavier Dolan’s (Heartbeats) 2009 debut feature, I Killed My Mother, in which high-school senior Hubert Minel (played by Dolan himself) and his boyfriend, Antonin Rimbaud (François Arnaud) arrive at an ad-agency office to do the Jackson-Pollock paint job requested by Antonin’s exceptionally cool mother. It’s a super-cool scene, too, all fancily edited to a raging alt-rock tune with quick cuts and jump-cutting paint drips and a sexy lovemaking break sped up like A Clockwork Orange. It also has no discernible other point than to demonstrate the filmmaker’s own hipness and technical proficiency, and it’s exemplary of the terminal problem from which the film suffers: Despite the apparently autobiographically-impassioned well from which springs the very particular yet recognizable story of a near-grown son and his hardworking, cheerfully middlebrow-bourgeois mother (the very good Anne Dorval), the film’s roots in real, problematic, complex emotions and its intermittent, brilliant flashes of aesthetic and narrative insight are all but drowned out by a grating, adolescent shortsightedness that becomes, at times, downright embarrassing. A great many of us probably fantasized at the time about making vindictive acts of fiction that would reveal the unfairness of our youth to the world, but how many of us would want our fully normal, typical teenage screeds, tirades, and actings-out dramatized, in all painful sincerity, for posterity, as if to be taken as the very height of urgency and seriousness

It’s not his subject matter itself, but his lack of perspective, that makes this intermittently inspired and engaging film ultimately hard to take, if not flatly, unexceptionably bad: There’s no way to say this without sounding condescending or patronizing vis-à-vis Dolan’s extraordinarily young age, but this Quebecois auteur, who at this point has three features under his belt at the age of 24 and made I Killed My Mother at the (too) tender age of 20, is, it sincerely pains me to say (I was a hotheaded 20-year-old with artistic leanings and a mother once, too, you know), much too close to the material to do it justice. The ecstatic pull-quote on the back of the DVD compares the film to Catcher in the Rye, and that applies well enough to its bittersweet/mostly-bitter coming-of-age theme, but does anyone think that if Holden Caulfield himself, and not Salinger, had written that novel, it would’ve let us see and feel nearly all that it does Dolan is, evidently (and, again, quite understandably given his age) helpless not to approach his hefty, genuine, and/or universal dramatic ingredients (parent-child relationships, young love, the mixed blessing of a good education, being a gay teen in a strange time of good but incremental, only haltingly advancing enlightenment) in a way that is, for lack of a better word, childish. Hubert’s plight — disenchantment and boredom with school, parents whose ragtag attempts to do what’s best for him feel misguided and oppressive, a world that seems generally committed to mediocrity and denial — is full of potential for empathetic depiction of those unforgettable, stifled teenage feelings, which are not innately trivial. But Dolan doesn’t demonstrate, onscreen where it counts, enough understanding of those emotions not to inadvertently trivialize them, to reduce them, make them appear smaller from the outside even as they eat the protagonist alive. (And speaking of trivialization, the less said of Dolan’s noble but misguided, perfunctory attempt to shoehorn the reality of bullying/violence in the lives of LGBT youth into his already-challenged juggling of events, the better.)

So, the film begins on a petty note — a slo-mo close-up, from the disgusted Hubert’s POV, of his mother’s overly-painted lips smeared with cream cheese as she messily eats a bagel — and does not often enough rise above pettiness to earn its faintly ludicrous aura of gravity (pettiness and self-seriousness being the cruel twin stars that often guide the teenager’s intense, uncomfortable, unasked-for state of being). The details on which Dolan chooses to dwell in order to demonstrate powerful, maybe even shocking maternal-filial tension are mostly the stuff of endless, pointless little squabbles too relished to allow accumulation into anything much bigger than that — the sort of picking, escalating spats that are “real” enough, sure, but more suitable to Curb Your Enthusiasm-like comedy than earnest, searing, wisdom-emanating drama. Maybe the film is supposed to be a comedy, but I don’t think so; I certainly never got the sense that Dolan would much appreciate the fact that Hubert’s end-of-his-rope tantrums — over being denied emancipation, over being sent off to boarding school, over virtually anything his embarrassing, uncool mother, so very unlike Antonin’s creative ad-exec mom, does or says — resemble nothing so much as the acts of impotent rage (mostly consisting of throwing snack foods like Jolly Ranchers and Cheetos at the source of said rage, which actually happens in this movie) hilariously indulged in by overgrown “teen” Jerri Blank (Amy Sedaris) on the great cult TV comedy Strangers with Candy.

There’s no denying Dolan’s extensive visual vocabulary, and when it works — as in his lovely use of cut-ins of tiny details by way of introducing/setting scenes, or his striking and effective way of cutting between characters in conversation not in the typical over-the-shoulder shots but by alternating between unusually composed, decentered frontal views of the speakers — it feels prodigious, very sophisticated and fluent. But then the director brings us back to the reality of his demonstrable but rather undeveloped talent with exercises like the aforementioned impromptu-music-video office-painting scene; the film virtually suffocates on hollow, indiscriminately deployed tricks like slo-mo , hamfisted symbolism, gaudy dream/fantasy sequences, and an insufferable black-and-white video diary conceit exuding much more unearned self-importance than relevance or revelation. But if it derails itself with too much that is as slick, disposable, and empty as a TV commercial, I Killed My Mother also contains glimmers of a still-gestating dramatic insight and aesthetic discipline — the too-thin but present-and-accounted-for attempts, mainly through a fairly well-executed subplot involving a teacher/mentor of Hubert’s (Suzanne Clément) and her wisdom, at seeing the kid’s narcissism and his mother’s vulnerability more clearly; Dolan’s sometimes inspired, apt, compelling compositional sensibility and ability to pace and structure well when he so chooses — that may yet lead to something fully formed and substantial. But it’s more of a wobbly, not-very-successful experiment by a filmmaker who has yet to find a voice (let alone mastery) than anything like a truly good film. The affection you feel for it in spite of yourself has more to do with the actually very young source of its youthful mistakes than its sporadic achievements; the film may vacillate crazily between emotional incisiveness and pubescent myopia, but it’s actually true, not just a figurative criticism, that Dolan and his nevertheless intriguing talent still have a lot of growing up to do.

 

THE DVD
Video:

This transfer of I Killed My Mother, presenting the film in anamorphic widescreen at its original theatrical aspect ratio of 1.85:1, is very good. All of the colors and contrasts are vivid and sharp, the darks solid, and the skin tones natural, with very few instances of edge enhancement/haloing and no compression artifacts such as aliasing to mar the experience. For the most part, a healthy degree of celluloid-like texture remains to the picture quality, indicating some conscientious caution in the use of digital clean-up for home media.

Sound:

The DVD’s Dolby Digital 5.1 surround track (in French with non-optional English subtitles) offers up the film’s sound track in full clarity, depth, and range, with an immediate solidity and heft to the dialogue and an expansiveness to the ambient noise (especially of exterior scenes) and music. No distortion, imbalance, or muffling are present at any point.

Extras:

Just the film’s U.S. theatrical trailer and a couple of other previews for Kino Lorber releases.

 

 

FINAL THOUGHTSI Killed My Mother is a coming-of-age drama made, half-impressively and half-disastrously, by a filmmaker who had himself not yet come of age — the Quebecois enfant-terrible writer-director Xavier Dolan, who wrote and directed it at the age of 20. This means that its story of a high-school senior (Dolan) experiencing, due to several factors — his open-secret gayness, the lingering complex emotions from his parents’ divorce, his own adolescent self-involvement, and his mother’s actual wide, stubborn streaks of annoying middle-brow middle-agedness — an especially tempestuous cutting of the apron strings has all the infectious energy and blunt, shrill beginner’s philosophizing and self-righteousness of a teenager, an overeagerness to prove itself (its smartness and coolness) vying with surprisingly real, affecting emotions and insights such that it holds your interest even when you find yourself rolling your eyes. The eye-roll factor overwhelms this overstuffed, needlessly hyper hodgepodge of a film long before it finally calms down and develops some tonal control for its should-have-been moving conclusion, but some of the too-many narrative and stylistic touches the talented and proficient Dolan throws at the wall do stick. Not enough to rescue the film from succumbing to its overdose of dramatic and aesthetic nonsense, unfortunately, but enough to Rent It and witness the chaotic birth of a filmmaker who could yet — it’s too early to tell from the writhing, half-formed, larval contours of I Killed My Mother — channel his overabundance of energy and ideas into endeavors better developed and more complete.