Cannes

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XAVIER DOLAN’S LAURENCE ANYWAYS TO OPEN IN THEATERS THIS SUMMER. BREAKING GLASS PICTURES TO RELEASE DOLAN’S HIGHLY ACCLAIMED FILM. EXECUTIVE PRODUCED BY GUS VAN SANT.

“A towering achievement.”—Huffington Post “Astonishing.”—Variety

Acclaimed French-Canadian filmmaker Xavier Dolan’s feature film Laurence Anyways will be released by Breaking Glass Pictures in U.S. theaters June 28 with a theatrical run throughout July; please see reverse for full theatrical schedule with additional cities and dates forthcoming. The third feature from the young filmmaker, who has been hailed by the New York Times as “wildly talented,” stars Melvil Poupaud (Broken English, A Christmas Tale) and Suzanne Clément (The Long Winter, I Killed My Mother) as Laurence and Frédérique, a couple whose commitment to each other is challenged when Laurence reveals his desire to live as a woman. The film debuted in the Un Certain Regard section of the 2012 Cannes Film Festival, where it won the Queer Palm and a Best Actress award for Clément’s performance as Frédérique. Gus Van Sant (Good Will Hunting, Milk) recently signed on as the executive producer of the film in advance of the U.S. release.

Laurence, a French teacher and soon-to-be-published author, enjoys an intense and mutually loving relationship with his fiancée, Frédérique. But on the day after his 35th birthday, Laurence confesses to Fred that he longs to become a woman, asking her to support his transformation. The film follows the course of the couple’s on-again, off-again relationship throughout the 1990s.

The film took home the Best Canadian Feature Film Award at the Toronto International Film Festival, as well as the Award of the Youth and the Golden Swann at the Cabourg Romantic Film Festival. In addition to winning Best Actress honors in the Un Certain Regard category at Cannes, the film won two Canadian Screen Awards for Best Costume Design and Achievement in Makeup and received eight other Canadian Screen Award nominations including a nomination for Suzanne Clément for Best Actress and a nomination for Melvil Poupaud for Best Actor. The film was also nominated for a French César for Best Foreign Feature.

Like Dolan’s previous films, which were hailed by Entertainment Weekly as “madly stylish” and New York Times as “a gush of gorgeous images and music,” Laurence Anyways boasts striking visuals and a rich soundtrack. The film’s ambitious runtime of 168 minutes allows Dolan to fully explore his themes and aesthetic vision: Film Comment notes that the film’s “baroque visuals... marry Sirkian mise en scène with Eighties MTV aesthetics” while the Telegraph declares that continued Laurence Anyways is “vibrantly visualized, emotionally risky, and buoyed up by the soundtrack of the year”and Time Out London praises the film’s “dry humor, expressionistic flourishes, bravura soundtrack and exquisitely queer design.” The soundtrack is equally expansive and features a compilation of 80s, 90s, contemporary and classical music including Fever Ray, The Cure, Depeche Mode, Celine Dion, Beethoven and Tchaikovsky.

Laurence Anyways follows the success of Dolan’s previous features I Killed My Mother (2009) and Heartbeats (2011). Premiering at Cannes Film Festival in 2009, when Dolan was only 20 years old, I Killed My Mother was praised by Hollywood Reporter as a “funny and audacious adolescent comedy from a talented beginner” and was awarded the People’s Choice Award at the Istanbul International Film Festival. Heartbeats, which also premiered at Cannes, was hailed as “delightful and insightful” by the Wall Street Journal and “engaging, moody [and] visually snappy” by NPR. The film won numerous awards including Regards Jeunes Prize at Cannes, the The Sydney Film Prize at the Sydney Film Festival and Golden Starfish Award at the Hamptons International Film Festival and recently highlighted the Sonoma International Film Festival’s LGBT showcase.

View trailer here: http://www.imdb.com/video/imdb/vi2019533849/

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Edited by Vanessa McMahon