[CRITICAL] JUST the END OF THE WORLD

Dolan is well-become a superstar. His coronation in cannes for Mommy placed it in a dilemma for the rest of his career : to take a risk and continue doing what he had always done, or courage to change. In both cases, the risk was present. We felt getting the turning-point in his filmography just by seeing the parade of stars in the casting, which marks a strong break with his previous films. Dolan is a star. It may therefore afford stars if he wants. Provided that this is justified.

JUST the END OF THE WORLD tells the story of Louis, a theater writer who comes back to see his family after 12 years for them to announce that he is going to die. Louis, this is Gaspard Ulliel, great in his way, to internalize, to roll with the punches and never falter. But there was rarely more than “2 or 3 words to say“. He comes to announce his death and yet he already seems to be ghostly, as a tomb to which we speak to reminisce about the good times. The discussions are often about the past, to try to revive it by the word time. Around Louis, it screams. Sometimes strong. Dolan is not mistaken in its choice of casting in taking two players with strong characters that are Vincent Cassel and Léa Seydoux. It had two heads towering to embody these characters (Antoine and Suzanne), seeking to get noticed by the other, to cause, to attract attention to them. Behind the screams, of course, there were injuries, personal neuroses that motivate them to do so. Beside them, the secondary character the strongest is that of Catherine (fantastic interpretation of Marion Cotillard), the wife of Antoine. It is the element at hand, the sister-in-law, who does not want to interfere, who refuses to raise her voice so that it is immersed in a cacophony permanent. A sort of reflection on the feminine of Louis. The only one who will understand why the son came back among his people and who, in an ultimate view, we made it to capsize.

The young canadian director has always had a pronounced taste for the stage-catching the eye, to the great theatrics as much as for the findings, and effects of visual styles. JUST the END OF THE WORLD is formally signed Dolan is more thin the exuberant (and successfully) Mommy. More dark also. It is enough to see the photography of the film, the way she was diving into the shadow of a discussion in a kitchen. Despair hovers over the film of Xavier Dolan, writing up visually a suffocating feeling and restoring an atmosphere of end of the world, accentuated by the constant shouts. Like what, not worth it to restrict the limits of its framework to mark the choking – in this sense we can say that Dolan has matured. And when the light clears, it is for us to participate in the recall of a memory of youth, where joy and carefree attitude were the key words. Of a sudden the colors more pleasant to come to us to cherish the retina, making us feel the heady passion of a love vanished. An interlude and a welcome breath fierce and futile, that it only takes the time to appreciate that when it comes to an end.

It is also recognized Dolan at how shamelessly that he has to use music that is very marked. The boy was successful with his previous film to deliver a scene intense on the Celine Dion. He did it again with Dragostea Din Tei (the group’s Romanian O-Zone, yes in a scene which we would never have signed on the paper but when put into pictures, becomes a pure moment of grace. If it grants the new relevant choices (such as during a scene between Louis and Suzanne, where I Miss You Blink 182 sounds mixed, such a call of the heart, a small voice melodic, inner, expressing the substance of the thought of a sister orphan of his brother for too long), he loses at the last second during the last plan punctuating his feature-length film, with Natural Blues Moby. While the dynamic demanded silence, appeasement, he lets himself go in an attempt at a crude flirting with self-parody.

“JUST THE END OF the WORLD, we smashing in his moments of silence, when the hysteria stops.”

The dysfunctional family has always been at the heart of the work of Xavier Dolan before. JUST the END OF THE WORLD , expresses the incommunicability by the sound and the fury. As if he had to fill the void with words, to avoid moments of sincerity, where between four eyes you say what was on the heart. Over the movie, characters are often isolated by pair… It is in these moments that they can be more liberated, say things important. Then as soon as it comes Antoine, everything changes, everything explodes. Until a sudden wave of hysteria in the final. But where the film is sublime, it is in his ability to sunder the heart in its moments of silence. Those who, suddenly, say much more than a stream of words. A wink and a knowing glance between the two brothers, a smile, an exchange of glances and a finger on the mouth to say that it is better to be silent. And then the end. Just the end.

Published on may 19, 2016.

Maxime Bedini

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