Out Actor/Director Xavier Dolan Reconnects with Adele on 'Easy On Me'
The music world is abuzz over Adele's latest single, "Easy On Me," which dropped Thursday. What viewers may not know is that the video is directed by Xavier Dolan, the out French Canadian director/writer/actor who also directed her previous video "Hello." .
The video, shot shot last month in Quebec, Forbes reports, "topped the U.S. iTunes chart and attracted millions of views within hours of being uploaded to YouTube to become the site's top trending clip ahead of her upcoming album, '30,' released next month."
In the video, Vulture writes, "Adele draws parallels between her past and future by beginning the black-and-white video at the same home from her Grammy-winning single 'Hello'. Instead of trying to make an abandoned house a home, she decides to leave to find herself instead."
"I was honestly hoping for this to happen," Dolan said in a statement reports Pitchfork. "For me, there's nothing stronger than artists reconnecting after years apart. I've changed. Adele's changed. And this is an opportunity to celebrate how we've both evolved, and how we've also both remained faithful to our dearest themes. It's all the same, but different."
And while Adele has a strong collaboration with Dolan, she has also expressed interest in working with another out director. "Adele has also expressed a desire to work with Carol's Todd Haynes, who does have some experience working on music projects," reports Vulture.
Since making his directorial debut with "I Killed My Mother" in 2009, Dolan has been a Cannes Film Festival favorite, winning three awards. He later went on to win the the Jury Prize at the 2014 Cannes Film Festival for "Mommy" and the Grand Prix at the 2016 Cannes Film Festival for "It's Only the End of the World."
But while critically lauded, his films have been plagued with distribution problems or poor reviews, most notably his 2018 English-language feature debut "The Death & Life of John F. Donovan" that stars such top-line talent as "Game of Thrones" star Kit Harington, Jacob Tremblay, Natalie Portman, Susan Sarandon, Kathy Bates, Thandiwe Newton, Ben Schnetzer, and Jared Keeso. It has only a 19% rating on Rotten Tomatoes.
"Early in his career, Dolan's mix of artistic hubris and petulance in interviews earned him a reputation as the "bad boy of Quebec cinema," wrote T Magazine in a 2015 interview, at the time of the release "Mommy." In one interview, he went on to slam The Beatles. "I hate the Beatles. To be completely honest, and it mostly comes from ignorance, they're just not my f---ing vibe," he told The Star in another 2015 interview.
He went on to criticize the French film icon Jean-Luc Godard, who at the time refused to see "Mommy," which he called another "TV movie."
"It doesn't matter if I don't tell the whole world how honored I am to share a prize with a man who made somebody play with words over the years," he said. "He's a hero in cinema historically, but he's not a personal hero of mine."
He also addressed accusations of hubris over the years.
"Humility is the worst place to come from when you want to remotely succeed in anything. It's the place you want to go to once you've succeeded in something. Then humility is by all means the attitude or behavior to adopt. But I have dreams, I have ambitions. We dreamt of that Palme d'Or! We didn't get it. It's fine," Dolan said. "But yes, I'm not in it to say, 'Well, the important thing is to participate!' No! I'm not a jock!"
Over his career, Dolan has made eight features, most recently the relationship drama "Matthias & Maxime" in 2019. As an actor, he has been featured in his own films, including "I Killed My Mother," "Heartbeats," "Tom at the Farm" and Matthias & Maxime."
He is also has a prolific career as a voice actor, dubbing English language films into French spoken in Québéc (Québécois French), which is French spoken in Canadian provinces.
"Easy on Me" marks his third music video. His first was "College Boy" by Indochine in 2013.
Check out these pics from Dolan's IG: