This is exactly what I've been craving from Xavier Dolan, and what he excels at most successfully. La nuit où Laurier Gaudreault s'est réveillé is a decades spanning tale of the Larouche family. Four children riddled with pain, guilt, loss, and loneliness, and a mother who tries her best to hold it all, and everyone, together. It's pure Dolan family drama, but this time with even more time to flesh out the characters, the situations, and the conflict fully, with plenty of room to breathe.
Dolan employs more thriller elements into this series than what we are used to from his work. The story is quite intense, rife with troubles and questions throughout. Each member of the Larouche family has their own story, and the layers of these people are peeled back with each new episode, leading to a beautifully moving finale. Mireille and Madeleine's scene in the final episode made me weep, and then again (or just more, as it was continuous) soon after with two perfectly executed matching shots of a backyard in two different timelines.
The whole cast is very strong, my favourites being a very animated Magalie Lepine-Blondeau, Julie Le Breton, Patrick Hivon, and of course, Anne Dorval, Dolan regular and one of the greatest talents to come out of Canada, giving one of the performances of her career, maybe only second to
Mommy (2014).
The techs of the series are unbelievable. The breathtaking cinematography from Andre Turpin is deliciously rich and grainy, with endless depth of colour and light. The production design is so meticulously detailed, I don't know if I've ever seen anything like it before on film. The music, as always in a Dolan project, is excellent and used perfectly, and the score is absolutely gorgeous. It all works cohesively together to transport you to different places and times in the story.
All in all, this is top tier Dolan. Melodramatic flourishes, slow motion, a style to die for, beautiful performances, everything you come to a Dolan project for is all there. To recently read that Dolan has no projects lined up and that he wants to stop making films (at least for the time being) is such a crushing blow, especially after giving us this. I hope he doesn't make us wait too long, I'll be waiting with bated breath.
