It's Only the End of the World

It's Only the End of the World (2016) is about a writer coming home after twelve years. Louis has come to tell his family he is dying. He stays for one lunch and leaves without saying it. The film is those few hours. The source is Jean-Luc Lagarce's play of 1990. He wrote it after being diagnosed with HIV and died in 1995 at thirty eight. Xavier Dolan directed. The whole form rests on close ups; the camera stays on faces and the rooms are barely visible. The characters do not listen to each other, sentences break off, and speech overlaps. The cast is drawn from the best known names in French cinema: Gaspard Ulliel, Marion Cotillard, Léa Seydoux, Vincent Cassel and Nathalie Baye. Its reception at Cannes split in two. It was booed at the press screening and the reviews were severe; the jury nevertheless gave it the Grand Prix, the festival's second highest award. That contradiction was one of the most discussed events of Cannes that year. It was submitted as Canada's Oscar entry. It runs 99 minutes. Good for: intense stage rooted performance, family reckonings, and Xavier Dolan. Less good for: the film is almost entirely people shouting and it is wearing. The density of close ups feels suffocating to some viewers. Louis never speaks, so the character at the centre stays empty, which is deliberate and unsatisfying.