KnotMissPriceless Why so much hype?

Twilightfa Watch something else. There are very few redeeming qualities to this film.

Freeman This film is so real. It treats its characters with so much care and sensitivity.

Phillipa Strong acting helps the film overcome an uncertain premise and create characters that hold our attention absolutely.

Kirpianuscus The story is familiar. because the portrait of dysfunctional family is not rare in the cinema of last decades. but the film has a fundamental virtue - it is a Xavier Dolan work. and that change everything. because not the conflicts, vulnerabilities, isolation, angry and fears, the return of the son are the basic aspects. but the precise and not comfortable image of loneliness. using admirable cinematography. the right actors. the close up. the forceof silence. the small gestures and shadows of memories. the admirable cold dialogues. and the last part as ideal building for a search who becomes out of target. a film who impress. not only for artistic value. but for remarkable science to present the things who are out of us being inside us. frustrations, intentions, the desire to be far by the other who could represent only the stranger. who is just an accident. so, a beautiful Xavier Dolan.

proud_luddite In the 1990s, Louis (Gaspard Ullilel) is a gay man in his thirties who is a successful playwright in Paris. After a long absence from his family, he returns to the small town where he grew up in order to tell them of a serious health situation. Once there, past family dysfunction is brought to the surface again. The film is based on the play by Jean-Luc Lagarce.The relatives greeting Louis are his mother (Nathalie Baye), his older brother (Vincent Cassel), his brother's wife (Marion Cotillard) whom he is meeting for the first time, and his much younger sister (Léa Seydoux) who was a child when he last saw her. The best scenes are when Louis is one-on-one with each of the women. Among them, there is genuine awkwardness that tries, not always successfully, to hide the feelings of abandonment due to Louis' absence.The scene between Louis and his brother Antoine, however, is not so successful. Antoine is in a constant fit of rage and resentment. While Cassel plays the part well (though rather miscast as he is eighteen years older than Ulliel), the characterization feels incomplete.It's easy to compare Antoine to the Eddie Maresan character in "Happy Go-Lucky". But while each are enraged by life, the angry character is more easily understood in "Happy Go-Lucky" than in this film.In the beginning, one might have thought that Louis's being gay was the reason for his estrangement but the family seems okay about this. There's no indication of past or present homophobia. It's most likely the bad relations, especially those of his brother, that would probably cause anyone to flee.There is much to ponder in this film and it is very well acted by a fine cast. It is a good film but could have been much better if the character of Antoine was more explored.

Mikael Kuoppala I read Jean-Luc Lagarce's play "Juste la fin du monde" a while back and it didn't really make an impression on me. So I was quite intrigued and just a tiny bit worried when I learned that Xavier Dolan, possibly my favorite contemporary film director, was adapting this to me impenetrable text into a movie.I had confidence in Dolan's genius and was rewarded beyond expectations. The film is as magnificent as anything Dolan has created before. He has said in interviews that at first reading Lagarce's language- also off-putting for me- didn't impress him but that he discovered its power on second random reading. I'm grateful he did and that he has now shared this discovery with his audience with the aid of some truly superb acting performances.The very first scene establishes everything with narration by protagonist Louis (Gaspard Ulliel), a successful author who is flying to see his family for the first time in over a decade. Louis is dying. Dolan hides Ulliel's face with shadowy lightning and a cap as well as utilizes close-ups so extreme you can't get a proper feel of a face. The close focus continues in the following scenes of Louis's family, only to very gradually move away as the film progresses.Greeting Louis are his extravagant mother Martine (Nathalie Baye), his coolly detached younger sister Suzanne (Léa Seydoux), his dominant yet socially awkward older brother Antoine (Vincent Cassel) as well as Antoine's shy, even more socially awkward wife Catherine (Marion Cotillard).Dolan tends to depict extreme personal conflict in his work, uniting his fiercely dramatic, richly colored and always unique visuals with raw scripts that seem to channel Ingmar Bergman's best work. This also occurs in "Juste la fin du monde".If you looked at the movie without sound you could mistake it for a regular- if exceptionally well shot and acted- drama about a family uniting with the result of old wounds and conflicts emerging and taking over the scenes. This is indeed what basically happens here, but the dialog, to me so difficult to digest from the pages of a book, makes it all about what is left unsaid. Because even as extreme emotion takes over the characters and bursts out they still can't communicate with each other. Lines that one would expect to convey full, sincere, angry honesty are expressed through awkward, even incomprehensible dialog that only hints at the apparently troubled history of these people.Louis, as mellow and conciliatory as he acts, seems to be a dangerous catalyst for his family, an antigen they all defend their nest against. This is endlessly fascinating and sold so well by the actors, each and every one of them marvelous. The title becomes darkly ironic, as Louis soon seems to find his impending death a minor problem in his severely dysfunctional family. He connects with Catherine, another outsider and someone who he hasn't met before this one day during which the whole film occurs. "How much time?" Catherine asks Louis, a question that together with the offhand mention of Louis's first boyfriend having passed away from "cancer" establishes the fatal backdrop of the AIDS epidemic.At first glance "Juste la fin du monde" might seem like a melodramatic shouting match that emerges unfocused and aimless, but I ultimately find it urgently compelling and even insightful through its sustained aversion to a genuine unmasking of characters.Lagarce wrote the original play in 1990, reportedly to examine his own mortality. He was dying himself at that time and finally succumbed to AIDS in 1994. There is a touching dimension to the script's nightmarish reunion as we sense Louis's need to come full circle, to rediscover his childhood and adolescence, even to assure himself that his already estranged family can survive after he's gone. Death is ever present, and instead of trivializing the personal conflicts it elevates them, because they are if nothing else moments of vitality for people not truly living.

Kapten Video Canadian-French wonder kid Xavier Dolan is back with a – surprise! – vitriol-filled family drama. A terminally ill guy (Gaspard Ulliel) returns to his rejected close ones to reveal that he is dying. Also starring, Nathalie Baye, Vincent Cassel and Marion Cotillard. It's based on play (by Jean-Luc Lagarce), so it's mostly these four, in the bitter battle which is called trying to reconnect with the loved ones.I would say that in its current form, it would be pretty interesting 20-30 minute short movie. But it's stretched onto 97 minutes. The makers have cared little about building the mood or letting the text breathe and find it's natural pace, so the story never really becomes watchable.The first about 25 minutes are actually almost unbearable – just fighting and insults. No rhythm or rhyme to this non-stop viciousness, and they don't say almost anything remotely interesting. Which is kind of the point of (this part of the) story, but still wears you down. Be honest and say that it didn't.Essentially, the movie is not about relations at all but a symbolistic overview of accepting one's death – or human being's fear of death, which some would say is our main motivational force behind everything. Every family member represents a different stage of grief which rises from knowing there's no escape from the inevitable. And different parts of the story play the process through.Written like that, it sounds intriguing. And it is, conceptually. But for me, the makers have found just about the most tiresome approach to unravel it. Still, I like the artsy interludes and the end scene.This is the first Dolan movie I've seen, and it certainly arouses interest for his previous work – it's the sixth full-length movie written and directed by him, and the dude is only turning 28 by the end of the month!