No one is more entitled to "wunderkind" status than Xavier Dolan, the actor-turned-director (and indeed editor, writer, producer and costume designer) from Montreal. He now has four feature films on his CV as director, and is still some months shy of his 25th birthday.

I have been agnostic about his work, and found his last film, Laurence Anyways, unendurably mannered and indulgent. But this is different – a disorientatingly strange suspense drama based on a stage play by Michel Marc Bouchard, with touches of Hitchcock and Polanski. It may not entirely convince: the genre mannerisms are not quite bedded down. The psychological thriller form has imposed on Dolan some discipline,

and brought out his talent and energy. Dolan himself plays Tom, a guy who turns up at the funeral of his lover, only to find that the family – proprietors of a remote farm – have no idea about him, or his relationship with the deceased and their sexual orientation. The grieving mother, Agathe (Lise Roy) seems convulsed with suppressed grief and anguish that are more complex than at first appears. The disturbed and thuggish brother Francis (Pierre-Yves Cardinal) menacingly tells Tom to keep quiet, and forces him effectively to transfer his passion and grief to the figure of a fake girlfriend invented for his mother's benefit, who has been unable to come to the funeral but supposedly sends a message via Tom. And all the time, Francis's own feelings for Tom are distinctly ambivalent. It's intriguing stuff, coiled with ardour and fear.