24-year-old Xavier Dolan is preparing a summer U.S. release for his third feature Laurence Anyways (a film we quite liked at last year’s Cannes), but before that, the Canadian filmmaker is kicking up a bit of controversy. Having recently completed a music video for College Boy, a new single from the rock band Indochine, the subject matter isn’t going over well in their native country of France.
Starring Antoine Pilon as a high-schooler who gets bullied (starting with paper and pens being thrown at him up to urination and eventually being crucified and shot at), it’s a provocative, well-crafted piece of filmmaking. Having already been censored on French TV and various other channels, Dolan recently responded in Le Figaro, saying, “It seems absurd to me that the clip is censored. Is it really more violent than all the movies that arrive on our screens every day? The question shouldn’t be – did I go too far? It should be – what’s stopping a group of teenagers from going this far, given how powerful the gun lobby is in the U.S.”
It’s certainly NSFW, but we have to agree with Dolan that the level of violence here is not dissimilar from what we see coming out of Hollywood, or the news for that matter. One can see the full, uncensored version below and let us know your thoughts in the comments.
Do you think the video should be banned?