Film Drop // It’s Only the End of the World / Juste la fin du monde (2016)
Based on the stage play by Jean-Luc Lagarce, this film by Xavier Dolan is about an award-winning French writer named Louis who returns to his family home for the first time in over a decade with the intention of telling them that he is dying. From the moment he steps through the door, the nightmare starts. The film is intentionally oppressive, claustrophic at times, but a brilliant, stylised and hallucinatory depiction of family dysfuntion; of what is said and what is unsaid, past hurts, misunderstandings, betrayals and the failure to be seen or heard by those we love. This will not be everyone's cup of tea. In fact, many critics have called it insufferable. But I thought it captured the nuances of family dynamics accurately with compassion and honesty. The cast is stellar, (Louis is played by Gaspard Ulliel, siblings and partners are Vincent Cassel, Marion Cotillard and Léa Seydoux, and his neurotic, nervous mother is Nathalie Baye). The question remains throughout - with so much lost ground to make up for in the eyes of his family, how will Louis find the right time to burden them with the announcement of his death? Well worth a watch on @netflix.