It’s Only the End of the World

We all have off days. Those moments where, as hard as you might try, noth­ing seems to come out right. Xavier Dolan’s sixth fea­ture, an adap­ta­tion of a 1990 stage play by the late Jean-Luc Lagarce, is by some mar­gin his least suc­cess­ful direc­to­r­i­al effort, and that’s putting it lightly.

The expe­ri­ence of watch­ing this film equates to being tied-up and ball-gagged in the mid­dle of an unsu­per­vised children’s par­ty at which all atten­dees have con­sumed dan­ger­ous quan­ti­ties of bright, Tar­trazine-based flu­id. Shrill isn’t the world. Tung­sten-plat­ed ear muffs are need­ed to get through this one.

Wil­lowy fop Gas­pard Ulliel is a prodi­gal son who makes a rare return to the fam­i­ly nest. He has news. Gath­ered up for a sit-down meal is his shrill moth­er (Nathalie Baye in a Lou-Lou wig), his vio­lent­ly shrill broth­er (Vin­cent Cas­sel plus fly­ing sali­va), his unhinged and shrill sis­ter (Léa Sey­doux), and his mousy sis­ter-in-law (Mar­i­on Cotil­lard, who seems to be in a dif­fer­ent movie alto­geth­er). They’re thrown togeth­er in a room and they bel­low at one anoth­er for 90 excru­ci­at­ing minutes.

Every­body talks and nobody lis­tens. The clock ticks as our hero fights through the mire of ver­biage to say his piece. Dolan makes it impos­si­ble to see who’s address­ing who by film­ing the whole thing in bound­ary-encroach­ing close-ups.

He also makes it impos­si­ble to attain a sense of per­spec­tive. Major tal­ent on both sides of the cam­era is squan­dered in search of pro­duc­ing a film that’s so aggres­sive­ly annoy­ing that it is painful to sit through. It achieves this sick goal with fiery gusto.

The film starts loud and gets loud­er. It com­mu­ni­cates the irri­ta­tion of fam­i­ly gath­er­ings by emu­lat­ing that sense of irri­ta­tion, which is nei­ther big nor clever. It’s obvi­ous and deeply cyn­i­cal. Have a dou­ble dose of Ibupro­fen ready for when the cred­its roll.