Last year, Xavier Dolan contemplated "retiring" from cinema.
I don’t really want to do this job anymore. I'm tired. We are in 2022, and the world has changed drastically. Me, in that world, I no longer necessarily feel the need to tell stories and to relate to myself. I want to take time to be with my friends and family. I want to shoot commercials and build myself a house in the country one day when I have enough money saved. I don't say that in a sad way at all. I just want to live something else, other experiences.
Now, he’s telling Spanish outlet El Pais that he’s definitely done. No more moviemaking for him. He’s quitting.
I don't feel like committing two years to a project that barely anyone sees. I put too much passion into it to have these disappointments. It makes me wonder if my filmmaking is bad, and I know it's not.
In that same interview, Dolan mentions how he’s “afraid of a civil war caused by intolerance" and that it has depressed him. Art is now meaningless to him.
I don't understand what is the point of telling stories when everything around us is falling apart. Art is useless and dedicating oneself to the cinema, a waste of time..."
Who wants to bet he comes out of retirement in a few years? Or, who knows. maybe he’ll pull a Malick and we won’t see him for the next 20 years, but I wouldn’t bet on that.
If you are Xavier Dolan and your last three films have failed critically, then what should your next move be? Dolan has been a polarizing figure for many cinephiles. After surprising the film world, in his mid-20s to boot, with well-received fare such as “Laurence Anyways,” “Mommy,” and "Tom at the Farm,” his last there films have not been good at all.
It all started with 2016's "It's Only the End of the World," a film that won the Grand Jury Prize at Cannes, but not without being dubbed one of the worst movies to ever be awarded at the festival. Sure, many French audiences, and some critics, dug it, but the overall consensus outside of that country wasn’t good.
To make things worse, Dolan followed it up with his first English-language film, "The Death and Life of John F. Donovan," which turned out to be a disasterpiece of the highest-order. What do you make of a movie that completely wipes clean a Jessica Chastain performance from its final cut? Then came 2019’s “Matthias and Maxine,” another unwatchable movie.
Do I believe Dolan is actually retiring? Of course not. He probably just needs to take time off, regroup and reassess.