The latest picture from the prolific Canadian wunderkind Xavier Dolan is certainly not the easiest watch. An adaptation of a play by Jean-Luc Lagarce that tells of the return of a sensitive, successful gay son to his tempestuous family home, this is stridently confrontational in its approach. Dolan favours so many extreme, spittle-flecked closeups of shouting family members that it leaves you gasping for breath and longing for a wide shot.
Gaspard Ulliel plays prodigal son Louis, Nathalie Baye is screechy and lurid as his mother and Marion Cotillard delivers sensitive work as the browbeaten sister-in-law he has never met. But it’s Vincent Cassel’s character who is the most problematic – older brother Antoine is furious but it’s a hollow, noisy anger that doesn’t seem to authentically voice anything other than the screenwriter’s need to fill pages with dialogue.
