Sometimes the movie world is a strange place. After its 2013 Venice Film Festival debut Xavier Dolan’s LGBT-themed Tom At The Farm got plenty of praise, including winning the FIPRESCI Prize, being screened in competition at all sorts of prestigious festivals and getting released in various countries all around the world (indeed, we reviewed it for its UK release in August 2014).
However for some strange reason it never reached the US, despite the fact Canadian filmmaker Dolan has a large international following thanks to movies like Heartbeats and I Killed My Mother. It didn’t even get picked up after Xavier won the Jury Prize at Cannes last year for his follow-up film, Mommy (which is also yet to be released in America).
Now though American audiences will finally get to watch Tom At The Farm, as Amplify Releasing has acquired all US rights to the movie and will release it on August 14th, 2015.
Dolan comments, “It’s hard to say it in a fully modest way, but I was truly puzzled as to how exactly Tom At The Farm had never landed distribution in the US. “To me, it was by far my most accessible film; I mean, it’s a 90-minute psychological thriller, and it’s sort of gory but then very conventional too. I’m obviously psyched that Amplify Releasing has taken Tom under their wing. But the topic remains truly relevant – can intolerance and psychological violence ever be dull? – and I’m proud to know the American public will be able to see it. And hopefully, like it.”
In Tom At The Farm, after the sudden death of his lover, Guillaume (Caleb Landry Jones, Heaven Knows What), Tom (Dolan) travels from his home in the city to Guillaume’s family’s remote country farm for the funeral. Upon arriving, he’s shocked to find that the family knows nothing of him- and was expecting a woman in his place. Tom keeps his identity a secret but soon finds himself increasingly drawn into a twisted, sexually charged game by Guillaume’s aggressive brother (Pierre-Yves Cardinal), who suspects the truth.
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