It’s Only the End of the World – first look review

Full dis­clo­sure: I am more of an age­ing fan­girl than a lucid-mind­ed crit­ic when it comes to the films of Xavier Dolan. His flair for emo­tion­al hon­esty results in films that pum­mel you into masochis­ti­cal­ly accept­ing the unbear­able aspects of rela­tion­ships. If this review is luke­warm, I am more than will­ing to accept that it is a result of my own obtuse­ness. That’s the hope at least.

This in-your-face fam­i­ly dra­ma is adapt­ed from Jean-Luc Lagarce’s 1990 play about a man who comes home after a 12-year absence to tell his estranged fam­i­ly that he is dying from an unspec­i­fied ter­mi­nal ill­ness. Dolan is work­ing with more of an ensem­ble dynam­ic than in his five pre­vi­ous films, each of which hinges on intense rela­tion­ships between two or three peo­ple. The crème of French art-house glam­our squeeze into the small house where the major­i­ty of the film is set. Louis (Gas­pard Ulliel) is the com­par­a­tive­ly qui­et retun­ing hero. His two sib­lings are Suzanne (Léa Sey­doux) and Antoine (Vin­cent Cas­sel). He has a sis­ter-in-law in the form of Antoine’s wife, Cather­ine (Mar­i­on Cotil­lard). Head of the fam­i­ly, the vamp­ish­ly made-up Moth­er (Nathalie Baye) has some of the dev­il-may-care sass of Mom­my​’s Anne Dorval.

Events echo anoth­er 2016 Cannes com­pe­ti­tion film, Cristi Puiu’s Sier­aneva­da, for the sum total of the action is also fam­i­ly mem­bers snip­ing and bick­er­ing, at the cost of com­pas­sion and con­nect­ing. Apart from one gor­geous flash­back to an ear­ly lover, this movie has none of the intox­i­cat­ing colour-sat­u­rat­ed style of Dolan’s 2010 Heart­beats. It’s a small drab apart­ment set­ting, and we come to learn that Louis’ sib­lings feel boxed-in, angry and inse­cure. This is not so believ­able. It’s a stretch to look at Sey­doux, who radi­ates insou­ciant con­fi­dence, and believe that she needs any encour­age­ment to be free. It seems as if Dolan is will­ing to cast A‑listers who want to work with him, regard­less of their suitability.

Faces are shot in extreme close-up and there’s not much for Louis to do except lis­ten and try to exert gen­tle dam­age con­trol as old resent­ments rise to the sur­face. There is some struc­tur­al sim­i­lar­i­ty to 2013’s Tom at the Farm in that the sto­ry is book­end­ed by a man dri­ving to and from an impos­si­ble emo­tion­al atmos­phere. Of course, this being Dolan, the music choic­es are a com­bi­na­tion of elec­tron­i­ca and reclaimed chart top­pers. They fill in for Louis’ state of mind in the absence of any­one to tru­ly con­fide in.

What’s sur­pris­ing about this film is the mod­esty of its ambi­tion. Dolan isn’t try­ing to tell a ragged epic. This is a cap­sule dis­play­ing the every­day mad­ness of fam­i­ly life. He doesn’t show any char­ac­ter in reveal­ing detail. Each per­son is defined as a col­lec­tion of sur­face anx­i­eties that dri­ve each oth­er away. It’s a melt­down movie – both in sub­ject and deliv­ery – but the ques­tion is: is there any­thing more?

Dolan has already shown rela­tion­ship strife weld­ed around – in chrono­log­i­cal order – a spite­ful queer teenag­er, a love tri­an­gle, a man tran­si­tion­ing to become a woman, the after­math of death, and a teenag­er with autism. Giv­en this impres­sive ros­ter of rela­tion­ship-strife pow­ered dra­mas, it’s hard to escape the feel­ing that this lat­est sto­ry– in which rela­tion­ship strife is weld­ed around noth­ing except itself – is a less­er work.