Antoine Olivier Pilon

In Mommy (2014), Antoine Olivier Pilon's Steve O'Connor Després is difficult company, and the performance does not pretend otherwise. Pilon lets the violence be ugly without making it the only thing we notice about Steve. He can move from aggression into comedy without seeming to change characters, which gives us a reason to keep watching beyond wondering what trouble comes next. We rate the performance because it keeps our sympathy alive without making Steve easy to like.

Xavier Dolan had already cast Pilon in a small role in Laurence Anyways (2012) before giving him his breakthrough in Mommy. That early partnership established how much he could do with an emotionally explosive part, but it also helped associate him with troubled youth. 1:54 (2016), in which he plays Tim, shifts towards athletic competition and a more introspective character. His subsequent work includes an English-language role as Daniel Léger opposite Josh Hartnett in Target Number One (2020).

Dolan's most useful decision in Mommy is to give Pilon other actors who need not merely absorb his outbursts. Anne Dorval plays Steve's mother, while Suzanne Clément makes their neighbour Kyla someone with a life outside the family arguments. That third person matters: Steve cannot be the sole reason for every scene to exist. We were moved by the friendship between the three because their time together gives us something to care about beyond the next confrontation. Pilon's intensity works better when the people around him are equally worth watching.

The reservation is that a few stretches of Mommy bring him close to making intensity the entire performance. Repeated casting as troubled young men risks making that limitation familiar, however fully he commits to each part. We would like to see more roles that ask for the comic ability already evident here, rather than another test of how much distress he can convey. Start with Mommy, but allow for more shouting than its performances need.