This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

It is interesting even when nothing much happens, which is for most of its 3-hour running time. Read full review

This movie tries so hard to be funny, yet it falls flat every time. Just another example of recycled ideas repackaged with women in an attempt to appeal to a certain audience.

There is definitely an excellent idea hidden in the background of the film. Unfortunately, it's difficult to find it.

This was probably my least favorite Xavier Dolan movie so far. The story never really had any meaningful direction. I never became interested in what was happening to the main character. It's about a guy visiting his recently dead boyfriend's mother and weird brother in their farm.

Tom a la ferme is probably the most commercial of Dolan's films up to this point in his career. I say this because the movie includes a lot of the features that a good psychological thriller uses to keep its audience engaged. The chasing scenes, the intense score, the many close ups of our main character played with intensity and magnetism by Dolan himself. Dolan introduces a complex relationship between the villain and the victim, one we don't often see in this type of genre. While the villain here always remains violent, dangerous and cruel, at time he's also seen to be extremely vulnerable, and in a way is in need of his prey not for food, not for fulfillment of the usual need for sadism that describes such villains, but for company and affection. In his own twisted way Francis is dependent on Tom not leaving, as he does not want to go back to this lonely and secluded life he found himself in after choosing to stay behind and take care of his mom. This duty Francis feels to please his mom and help her with the farm as well as the mother's sorrow and pain felt in the aftermath of her son's death is one of the prominent topics in Dolan's films, the bond between mother and son. At some point in the film, this desire of Francis to keep Tom in the farm goes beyond the need for compassion, with scenes of sexual tension between the two becoming more and more common as the movie progresses. After attempting and failing to escape, Tom starts to find the eerie and intense life in this dysfunctional household get to him as he refuses Sarah's offer to get him out of the farm, and in a way developing a Stockholm syndrome. The lamb that once needed to escape the wolf's nest, now finds his position there and realises his importance in consoling the grieving mom and helping out the man that needs him and at the same time abuses him – this strange co- dependency is in fact what makes this thriller so intriguing. This comes to an end when Tom finally realises the danger he's facing after he finds out about Francis' past. All in all, while the film provides a storyline engaging enough to keep the audience watching, it never really manages to wow the audience at any point, nor does it manage to convince us of the credibility of its characters, with a lack of justification for many of their actions.

Set in a lonely farm in Quebec, TOM A LA FERME concerns the inner life of the eponymous central character (Xavier Dolan) mourning the death of his lover. He goes to his lover's family's isolated farm for the funeral, and there encounters the mother (Lise Roy) and her other son (Pierre-Yves Cardinal), neither of whom were aware of the dead lover's sexuality.The film concentrates on the gradual discovery by the family of their dead son's secret, and how it affects them. Francis is both horrified yet strangely affected; as the action unfolds, he develops an unnatural affection for Tom that is both sadistic and sexual. The mother seems to be unaware of what's happening around her, but perhaps she is just deliberately blinding herself to the truth as a means of self-protection. Tom finds himself imprisoned at the farm; even when his close acquaintance Sarah (Evelyne Brochu) comes to visit, he cannot contrive an effective escape.TOM A LA FERME concentrates on the ways in which people conceal their private inclinations, even from their nearest and dearest, and the damage that actually causes them. This is especially true of Francis, who emerges from the film as a seriously disturbed character, masking his sexual inadequacies beneath a veil of strength. Yet the process of self-discovery for all the characters is an enabling one - so much so that when Tom finally escapes from the farm, he does not appear very happy to have done so. The film ends with a shot of him re-entering the city of Montreal, the lighted skyscrapers flashing by outside his car windows, with his face set in an expressionless gaze as he drives. It seems that 'freedom' for him is nothing more than a form of imprisonment; by extension, therefore, his imprisonment at the farm was an opportunity to discover some form of freedom.Filmed on a series of bleak winter days in stark, washed-out colors, TOM A LA FERME is a searing psychological examination of sexualities and how they are often willfully concealed.

A very subjective review, and I hate having to put down a film (as an aspiring film director myself), but I would just want to present my personal view of the film, hopefully without ruining it for any of Dolan's fans or anyone who worked on the film. WARNING: This review may be harsh.I saw it at the BFI London Film Festival back in October of 2013. The second film I saw at the festival (following Alfonso Cuaron's "Gravity"). Having heard of Xavier Dolan's apparently impressive skills vastly out-spanning his young years, I entered the theatre with much anticipation, and excitement given my immense love for psychological thrillers. Unfortunately, I could not be more disappointed with a film than I was with "Tom At The Farm".FAR too long for the slow pace of the story, I feel that the narrative does not amount to anything. The audience is made to wait an hour and forty-five minutes, and is aching for Tom to just leave the farm, which when he finally does, everything in the story is left completely unresolved. A waste of time in my opinion. An agonising wait with little to no character development or resolution to conflicts to keep the audience interested. "Tom At The Farm" utterly failed to keep me engaged, and just as much as I was dying for Tom to just leave the farm, I was dying to leave the theatre.