Xavier Dolan’s great adaptation
Despite being only 27 years old, Canadian director Xavier Dolan has already made his sixth feature film Just the end of the world. This is the adaptation of the homonymous and very personal theatrical work by the great French playwright Jean-Luc Lagarce, written in 1990. Presented at Cannes Film Festival 2016he leaves with the Grand Prix and the Ecumenical Jury Prize, then in 2017 he received three Césars: Best result, Best Actor for Gaspard Ulliel AND Best editing.
Just the end of the world tells how Louis (Gaspard Ulliel) reunites with his mother Martine (Nathalie Baye), his sister Suzanne (Léa Seydoux), his brother Antoine (Vincent Cassel) and his sister-in-law Catherine (Marion Cotillard), whom he has not seen for twelve years and wants to say them that he’s sick and stuff like that his imminent death is inevitablebut his arrival brings back painful memories and deep family tensions…
It’s one thing to bring such talent to bear in a cast, but it’s another to direct them and get great performances. But Xavier Dolan succeeds, as all of his actors and actresses each deliver a truly exceptional performance. We think a lot about Vincent Cassel terrifying and moving in her profound discomfort, to Léa Seydoux, perfect in her false naivety of admiring and loving a brother she barely knew. Again to Marion Cotillard crushed than shiny and the only family member who understood why Louis returned… And of course, alGaspard Ulliel’s heartbreaking performance.
Gaspard Ulliel’s masterpiece
Louis is a famous writer and has AIDS. Having left his countryside without looking back to go to Paris and practice his profession, he distances himself geographically but also socially and culturally from his family, who does not coexist very well with the image of himself that Louis, despite himself, restores. Yet he is loving and kind, gentle, and while he might explode with sadness and anger, it is with infinite delicacy and terrible self-sacrifice that he tries to tell them of this near and tragic future: gonna die.
Gaspard Ulliel, then 32 years old, sublimates here the intention of Jean-Luc Lagarce and Xavier Dolan, namely that of transmitting the unspeakableplaying with the gaze and silences, or sometimes realizing a lack of play be able to highlight an implicit. Just the end of the world it was written by Jean-Luc Lagarce, at a time when he knew he was dying. In his last years he therefore undertook work on disappearance and family, on his love and its conflicts, and on the power of the word.
Very beautiful film, nourished in particular by the unique performance of Gaspard Ulliel, Just the end of the world leaves the Netflix catalog on January 15, 2024. Last days to (re)discover it.
Source: Cine Serie
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