Two months after its release on Club illico, the Quebec miniseries The night Laurier Gaudreault woke up made its debut on French TV on Monday evening, on the Canal+ channel. And the least we can say is that the French press fell for this first TV production by filmmaker Xavier Dolan.
“Xavier Dolan knocks us out with his series”. This was the title that topped the – dithyrambic – criticism of The night Laurier Gaudreault woke uppublished Sunday in the daily The Parisian. We could also read in the introduction to the article that “the Canadian filmmaker masterfully passes the cape of the small screen by delivering his first series”.
In a report published on Monday, the newspaper The world also praised Dolan’s new work adapted from a play of the same title by Michel Marc Bouchard. “The Canadian director paints a fragmentary and moving portrait of a family torn apart by lies and addictions”, writes the prestigious daily in substance.
The critic of Telerama talks about a “condensed series of Xavier Dolan’s obsessions”, and a “strong, elegant story, but less virtuoso than his cinema, more accessible, but less surprising”.
For the weekly TV 7 Days, The night Laurier Gaudreault woke up is nothing less than a “great achievement”.
“Dolan brought [à sa série] the same care as in his cinema: virtuosity of the staging, beauty of the light, richness of the sets…”, underlines the review of the magazine.
Adulated in France since his first visit to the Cannes Film Festival in 2009, Xavier Dolan toured the French media last week to promote his first TV series. The director of Mommy and of Just the end of the world notably reiterated to the French press his desire to take a break from cinema in order, he said, to “rebuild”.
A first at Sundance
Remember that the series The night Laurier Gaudreault woke up has been available on the Club illico platform since the end of November. Divided into five episodes, the work tells the story of a thanatologist (played by Julie Le Breton) who returns to the village of her childhood to embalm her mother, who has just died. She will have to— reconnect with her three brothers (Patrick Hivon, Éric Bruneau and Xavier Dolan), whom she has not seen for several years.
In addition to being presented on Canal+, The night Laurier Gaudreault woke up premiered last weekend at the Sundance Film Festival in Utah under the title The Night Logan Woke Up. The Quebec production is one of four television projects to have been selected by the programmers of the renowned American independent film festival.