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

2013; Masaryk University; Volume: 39; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.5817/bse2013-2-6

1805-0867

Jim Leach,

Cinema and Media Studies

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.