Amplify Releasing Prepare Summer Harvest for Dolan’s “Tom at the Farm”

Going on almost two full years since it landed in competition for the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival, Amplify Releasing have made their first foreign film language pick-up and have set it up Tom at the Farm with an August 14th release. Labeled as his homage to Hitch despite the filmmaker not being versed in the MacGuffin, Xavier Dolan’s fourth film and what I describe as bully porn and best work to date (I’m in the minority with this one) is the only film in his five film filmography to not have premiered in Cannes.

Gist: After the sudden death of his lover, Guillaume (Caleb Landry-Jones), Tom (Dolan) travels from his home in the city to Guillaume’s family’s remote country farm for the funeral. Upon arriving, he’s shocked to find that the family knows nothing of him and was expecting a woman in his place. Tom keeps his identity a secret but soon finds himself increasingly drawn into a twisted, sexually charged game by Guillaume’s aggressive brother (Pierre-Yves Cardinal), who suspects the truth.

Worth Noting: Lucky enough to have his entire filmography land distribution deals, due to his a maligned distribution deal on his first film I Killed My Mother (Kino Lorber eventually picked it up), Dolan’s films have been presented to U.S auds out of chronological order. Naturally the monster popularity of Mommy means film number four will show after film number five was released earlier in the year.

Do We Care?: Our Nicholas Bell had a lukewarm response citing that the “worn themes of the conditioned self-loathing neurosis that afflict a community unwelcome in rugged landscapes where masculine posturing and patriarchal traditions still reign supreme,” but I’m hopeful this first adapted film project (he is currently filming his second play adaptation) will gain traction due to the previous Mommy hype, but also breathe an air of malaise in what is a noir-fitted contempo thriller.