The New Orleans French Film Festival’s screening of Xavier Dolan’s latest feature was announced to be its US premiere. It initially felt exciting to watch a fairly significant new release without any already-ingrained critical consensus informing the experience – a rare treat these days. Except, the movie did arrive with its own pre-checked baggage even coming fresh off that international flight, thanks to the general divisiveness of Dolan’s flashy, bratty oeuvre at large. Even going in as cold as possible, I felt the exact same about Matthias & Maxime as I have about the other stray few Dolan movies I’ve happened to catch over the years (some at the very same fest): it was wildly uneven & in need of a shrewd trim, but also too stylistically bratty & refreshingly Gay to dismiss. At only 30 years old, Xavier Dolan has already firmly established a recognizable, idiosyncratic groove with a decade’s worth of routinely distributed feature films behind it. I greatly respect that level of professional & creative ambition in that young of a filmmaker, even if my own routine experience with his work is finding it Impressive but glaringly Imperfect.

Matthias & Maxime’s premise is so #OnBrand with the rest of Dolan’s career to date that it practically feels as if he’d already wrote it six or seven screenplays ago and was banking on audiences forgetting that it isn’t new. Dolan costars with Gabriel D’Almeida Freitas as the titular Max & Matt, respectively: two lifelong best bros who kiss on camera at a party after losing a bet and must deal with the aftermath of being very much Into It. The fallout of this revelation—that the presumed-straight macho dirtbags’ close friendship has an unspoken erotic undercurrent—plays out in two rigidly segregated settings: in tedious snapshots of their troubled home lives and in frantic, vibrant party sequences where the film periodically comes alive. True to form, Dolan punctuates his best moments with excitingly unpredictable needle drops & finely observed body language, but he also allows the story to drag on at least 20 minutes past its natural point of conclusion. Whether you’re enthusiastically on the hook for what Dolan regularly delivers or find it eyerollingly inane, Matthias & Maxime is eager to serve it up in heaps. It’s purely, precisely his usual thing.

I don’t mean to sound negative on this film’s value as an isolated work. If nothing else, I think Matthias & Maxime is incredibly observant about macho bonding rituals & typical group dynamics among basic bros – especially when parsing out what’s considered Normal male-on-male touching vs. what’s considered Gay. It’s just a shame that same thoughtful consideration didn’t extend to knowing how to trim the movie down to its best, most efficient shape. Like the few other Dolan titles I’ve caught, it’s frustrating because it has so much potential to be Great yet stumbles just enough to settle on being Good. It was exciting to walk into the film without a clear critical narrative warning me to expect more of the same from the director instead of a rare 5-star knockout. In typical Dolan fashion, watching it teeter on that tightrope was a significant aspect of its appeal.

-Brandon Ledet