JUSTE LA FIN DU MONDE (2016) Xavier Dolan

Seen at BFI Flare 2017

One of my favorite films is Visconti's *Gruppo di famiglia in un interno*, and here we are really in that area.

To stay true to the text, a play, Xavier Dolan always films in tight, cramped spaces, rooms where voices are always loud and chaos is at the doorstep. It's incredible how a text written by someone else can feel so personal in the director's adaptation. Dolan, such a young guy, proves that you are a Director when you can easily manage a group of actors of such caliber – practically the best of contemporary French cinema – creating a cohesive whole, rather than prima donna individualities (okay, Cotillard stands out, acting almost the entire time with just her eyes).

Despite the ever-present shouting, the film's main protagonist is the unspoken, the unsaid. You don't understand why the protagonist went to visit the family, you don't know exactly what the illness and even the reason for his escape are not communicated in any way. What is narrated is his visit and the reaction of the whole family to it, and how his presence triggers bizarre attitudes and bad moods from everyone. Dolan draws heavily from the cinema of the past, but he does so by creating films of total originality: he has clear ideas about the choice of stylistic approach, which, after his other extraordinary works, has now become recognizable, and that's a strength. In this way, the typical family squabbles are transformed by the prodigy director into pure tension that keeps the attention high (the scene in the car is splendid, shot entirely with the actors from behind, in which, starting from a trivial complaint, the complex relationship between the siblings is defined, where the heterosexual one, played by Vincent Cassel, unleashes all his resentment toward the younger, homosexual brother, for being the less intellectually gifted of the two, the less artistic, the more ordinary one an ancient anger always stemming from debate). As in every one of his films, Dolan pays surgical attention to the soundtrack. Again, it's perfect here, successfully mixing super trashy songs with refined pieces.