After the cinema, Xavier Dolan entered the world of series. He presents “The Night where Laurier Gaudreault woke up”, a sumptuous and ambitious work. To discover on Canal+.
In the early 1990s, Mireille, her brother Julien and their best friend Laurier formed an inseparable trio. The boys have just won the provincial baseball championship and Mireille dreams of burning the boards. Who knows what the future holds for them? However, one night in October, in 1991, their destinies are forever changed by a terrible incident and their paths separate.
The Night Laurier Gaudreault Woke Up, a series created and directed by Xavier Dolan.
For this new project adapted from a play, Xavier Dolan plays and directs. He interprets the role of Elliot, one of the children of the Larouche family.
Around him, the filmmaker brings together a uniquely Quebec cast. Julie LeBreton, Patrick Hivon, Éric Bruneau and Magalie Lépine Blondeau find the characters they played on stage.
For the role of the matriarch, Xavier Dolan called on his favorite actress, Anne Dorval. Together, they sign their fifth collaboration after I killed my mother, Les Amours imaginaires, Mommy and Matthias & Maxime.
After eight films and cascading awards in record time, Xavier Dolan wants to take a break from his career. The goal: take time, refocus on himself and find inspiration.
Before stepping away from film sets, the Quebec filmmaker and actor presents his latest project and not least, a series – written, directed, produced, edited and starred by him.
Entitled The Night Where Laurier Gaudreault Woke Up, this program is an adaptation of the eponymous play by Quebecer Michel Marc Bouchard. This is not the first time that the director has fallen in love with the playwright since he had already transposed one of his works with Tom on the farm.
Fred Gervais
“In these two pieces that I saw, I felt the need to bring them to the screenreveals the director to AlloCiné. Michel Marc Bouchard and myself, we are in the same world of sensibility. The same things affect us for the same reasons, not necessarily in the same way, but we come from the same place, we speak the same language.”
Here, Xavier Dolan finds his favorite themes – family, death, the quest for identity and truth – but offers something radically different. If the author has already demonstrated his interest in dark and tortured stories in the past, he goes even further. The atmosphere is disturbing, heavy and even eyeing horror.
Fred Gervais
Through five episodes, the viewer dives into the past of the Larouche family, tormented by a terrible secret that has divided each of the members, in particular Julien (Patrick Hivon) and Mireille (Julie LeBreton), the brother and sister.
If the story takes the time to install the decor and its characters, the pace accelerates from the second episode as the different faces are revealed in broad daylight.
A great series enthusiast, Xavier Dolan uses the codes of the genre to make his story addictive with the help of turnarounds at the end of each episode. The serial format also allows the director to allow himself breathing space and a few moments of grace, even more than in his films.
The Night Laurier Gaudreault Woke Up is a major milestone in the filmmaker’s career. She brings together, in one work, all her obsessions and everything that makes her art powerful.
The series also recalls how, beyond his talent as a director, Xavier Dolan remains a great director of actors – the face-to-face between Julie LeBreton – imperial – and Patrick Hivon at the end of the episode 4 is likely to mark the spirits.
And how not to mention the photography, taken by its usual chief operator, André Turpin, which takes the story to another level of beauty and poetry?
Without revealing too much, the secret of the plot allows Xavier Dolan to address a theme that particularly affects him. This work is not necessarily political or committed but it becomes, by its subject, an important document on its time and the difficulties of being oneself.
Interview by Thomas Desroches, in Paris, January 4, 2023.
The Night where Laurier Gaudreault woke up is broadcast on CANAL+ and available on myCANAL.