French-Canadian filmmaker Xavier Dolan’s latest impassioned cinematic outing, and his most mature to date, is a family drama that consists of a lot of very long wordy speeches, yet it is essential about what is not being said about the elephant in the room. 42-year-old Louis (Gaspard Ulliel) has come back to his family home in the country after a 10-year absence ostensibly to tell them all that he is dying, but he knows that it’s going to be tough just trying to break the news to them.
When his cab arrives from the airport none of them even know how to greet him and they cover up their uncomfortable nervousness in different ways. His younger sister Suzanne (Léa Seydoux) seems at a total loss for words, as does his sister-in-law Catherine (Marion Cotillard ) that he has never met before and she starts babbling on about her two young children. Louis’s mother (Nathalie Baye) has overdressed and has painted her nails bright blue to match her oversized jewelry and looking ….as Suzanne said ‘like a tranny!’ ….. rushes around getting appetizers out, after she has hugged her prodigal son.
They may not be showing their real feelings, but his older brother Antoine (Vincent Cassel) makes no effort to hide either his anger or bitterness which is not just confined to Louis as the rest of the family, especially his wife Catherine, get the full brunt of his bad temper over the most seemingly slightest provocation.
During the course of the day, each family member ensures that they have their own private heart-to-heart with Louis so they can voice their own opinions on what they have read about in the newspapers about his life in the city as an openly-gay successful writer. Their focus is not necessarily on him, but more so on how his self-imposed exile has impacted their own lives. None of them even seem the slightest inclined to even ask about how his life really is, which we get the tiniest of glimpses when Louis’s phone rings and it’s his partner back home asking if he has managed to fulfill his mission yet.
Dolan’s d.p. shoots most of this in very tight close-ups which shows the minute detail of their discomfort, and even if any of them actually suspect the real reason for this unexpected visit, then they are certainly not going to show it. Only Antoine is prepared to speak his mind, but even when he does we never really appreciate what filled him with such deep-rooted anger in the first place.
Dolan adapted the piece from a play by Jean-Luc Lagarce whose repertoire started to make him famous after his own death of AIDS in 1995. It accounts for the slight stage effect of the movie adaption, but even so, that certainly does not take anything away from the sheer power of it all. This sad story may have its share of melodrama, but that is due to this slightly dysfunctional dynamics, and not because of the AIDS scenario which marks some sort of progress.
We are never really sure what Louis’s motives are for thinking he needed to share the information of his impending death with a family that he had kept at postcard distance for over a decade, but Ulliel lets us suspect that it may possibly be to relieve his own conscience. His attempt at being stoic is very effective, but even though the decision on how long he stays is in the end not up to him, he appears happy enough to be able to escape and retreat back into his own life.
Dolan has gathered a really stellar A-List French cast who really elevate the whole piece ….especially Baye and Cassels along with Ulliel, but the normally superb Cotillard looks more uncomfortable than the character she plays is the only real disappointment in this near-faultless movie.
Ever since Dolan burst onto the scene at the tender age of 19, this multi-award-winning genius of a very prolific filmmaker has also won his fair share of detractors too who seem to almost detest his work sight unseen which will sometimes end up with his movies getting ‘mixed reviews’. However, regardless of what one thinks of the Canadian wunderkind, this movie will be surely ranked as one of his best at the end of the day. And deservedly so too.
Labels: 2017, Aids, drama, French, Xavier Dolan
