Gabriel D'Almeida Freitas

Xavier Dolan

Pier-Luc Funk

Samuel Gauthier

Antoine Pilon

Adib Alkhalidey

Micheline Bernard

Anne Dorval

Marilyn Castonguay

Catherine Brunet

Harris Dickinson

Camille Felton

Anne-Marie Cadieux

Monique Spaziani

Jacques Lavallée

Louis-Julien Durso

Johanne Garneau

Alexandre Bourgeois

Jean Harvey

Connor McMahon

Michael Kelly

Louise Bombardier

Claude Gasse

Agnès Bouchard

Guenièvre Sandré

Julie Beauchemin

William Pelletier

Audrey McDonald

Dakota Jamal Wellman

Beverly Lowe

Nathalie Doummar

Alice Pascual

Félix Paquette

Maude Demers-Rivard

Victor Billo

Eliza Hittman

Sylvain Brassard

Nancy Grant

Jean-Michel Blais

Colombe Raby

André Turpin

Pierre-Yves Gayraud

Claude Tremblay

Phoebe Greenberg

Nathanaël Karmitz

Elisha Karmitz

Drama

Romance

Matthias & Maxime

Sons of Manual

Canada

English

Français

friendship

quebec

lgbt

gay romance

gay theme

SWITCH.

It’s hard not to be swept up by ‘Matthias and Maxime’. This is a film made with such love and care, sincerity and grace, showcasing everything that makes Xavier Dolan such an arresting filmmaker and distilled into their purest form. What made my heart soar was in how it laid bare how complex human relationships are, how pointless such binaries as gender and sexuality are, how love between two people is greater than simply defined as friendship or romance. ‘Matthias and Maxime’ refuses to play into such simplistic categories, instead celebrating the wonder of love and human connection without the need for them. Maybe some viewers will try and pigeonhole the protagonists as “gay“ rather than just two people in love to make themselves feel more comfortable, much like the bi-erasure in many responses to <a href=“/article/review-call-me-by-your-name-beautiful-beyond-description“>‘Call Me By Your Name’</a>, so pointlessly obsessed are we with useless outdated labels, but that would be such a loss to their experience of the richness of this film. ‘Matthias and Maxime’ is a quiet triumph, a tender love story beautifully told, a reminder of how deep the rivers of love can go, how violent travelling them can be and how so very worth the journey is.
- Daniel Lammin

Read Daniel's full article...
https://www.maketheswitch.com.au/article/review-matthias-and-maxime-a-magical-film-on-the-complexity-of-friendship-and-love

CinemaSerf

I was rather disappointed by this effort from Xavier Dolan. Perhaps writing/editting and starring in the film robbed him too much of objectivity when it came to actually watching this bit of a non-story. He portrays "Max", a young French-Canadian man who is about to emigrate to Australia. At a party with his childhood friends, he and handsome best pal Matt (Gabriel D'Almeida Freitas) get lumbered with starring in a video being made by one of their number's pesky younger sister. The scene involved the two of them kissing - something neither had done (as an adult) with a man before. What ensues is a slow, deliberately so, depiction of the complications that this kiss has on their relationship. "Matt" has a long term girlfriend, so his reconciliation with his "new" feelings for his friend take on a different guise from those of the single "Max" who has issues with his recovering addict mother. Sadly, though, too much of those repercussions are presumed on us by the director and not demonstrated to the audience. It doesn't need to be a cheesy traditional romance, nor a sex fest, but we are left to imagine or envisage that they want each other only because we know that's what the film is about - not because we are presented with much tangible, or even implied, sense of desire. Indeed the others in their group more readily flirt and banter than the two in the title. It doesn't have a beginning, middle and end - it just has a middle. A rather interestingly filmed and quite well put together middle, but a middle nonetheless. Certainly worth watching - I think Dolan has something about him - but I wanted more from the characters and the story - as it is I just felt like a rather unsatisfied observer.

In Conversation with Xavier Dolan

Official International Trailer #2

Official International Trailer

Official Trailer

Matthias & Maxime( 2019)

Best friends forever.

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A review by SWITCH.

Written by SWITCH. on Mon Aug 12 2019

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