Here’s another we caught at AFI fest in November, and at the end of a long day of screenings–Xavier Dolan’s third feature was delightful visual feast with a beautiful leading lady (Melvil Poupaud), gushing with inordinate props, costume and dressings that beckoned a post-punk style. As important as aesthetics are to director and style-queer Xavier Dolan, the narrative is even more rich and textured that the scarves that assail the bleakest of landscapes. You can’t help to digress when talking about Dolan, so I won’t pretend.

Dolan has been a festival favorite since How I Killed My Mother even after his last feature Heartbeats skipped a (ahem) “beat” with most critics. People like to mention him as a wunderkind with influences of Almodovar, Godard and Wong Kar Wei. But he’s emerging as an auteur in his own right with this one.

Laurence concerns a teacher that loses his job, and struggles with his transsexual identity. The film moves beyond tolerance. Actually, what Laurence challenges most are the comfy, preconceived notions of those who seem themselves as “tolerant”, but are just placated by their own narcissism if not tending toward outright hostility. Nonetheless, the persistent prodding, questioning, and a lot of political correctness threatens to suffocate her.

Really, she just wants to be left alone. Being honest may seem showy to the public, but for Laurence it’s more in line with her inner-poet than inner-performer. After nearly three hours of screen time, she learns to face up to the arrogance and brutality with a sense of humor and a wry smile. Laurence is a hopeful film and does achieve it with some gratuitousness but not in a Matthew Shepard docudrama way. It’s about dressing up your own Black Isle, a bleak landscape the Laurence and his lover visit together.