Tom at the Farm (2014)

"Tom" (Xavier Dolan) arrives at a remote farmhouse and lets himself in. Shortly afterwards, "Agathe" (Lise Roy) arrives home to welcome this best friend of her son whose funeral she has just attended and that he has just missed. What she doesn't know is that he was his lover, but her other son "Francis" (Pierre-Yves Cardinal) is in on their sordid little secret and makes no bones about his disgust in the middle of the night. "Agathe" likes having her guest around for a while, though, and with plenty to do around their 45-cow farm, "Tom" starts to learn some of the ropes whilst "Francis" plays an increasingly violent and manipulative game. Initially that has quite an intimidating effect, but after a while it becomes clearer to "Tom" (and to us) that perhaps "Francis" isn't quite what he purports to be. When "Sarah" (Evelyne Brochu) arrives in the guise of her late son's fictitious girlfriend, events become even more toxically complex and things between the two young men seem set to heading for quite a dramatic conclusion. Despite his dyed blonde hair, did anyone else thing Dolan looked like Robert Downey Jnr here? Either way, he turns in one of his best efforts as a man dealing with his own trauma and demons as well as with the aggression of a Cardinal who combines his angry odiousness with a degree of vulnerability in a convincing fashion that dominates proceedings as the psychological see-sawing between the pair becomes tinged with a vaguely and thereby quite potent homo-eroticism. It's a bleak assessment of humanity, but one I found perversely engaging and it shows well just how many different manifestations grief can take.