Oscars Preview: 30 Movies to Watch Before the Nominations Come Out!
By Emily Scott
Image via Entertainment One
It’s Only the End of the World
What it’s about:
It’s Only the End of the World is a French-Canadian drama about Louis, a young gay playwright. Louis has been estranged from his family for twelve years. When he discovers that he has a terminal illness, he returns to his family with the intent to inform them of his imminent death. That task, however, becomes more difficult when Louis is faced with his relentless mother, his rebellious sister, his profoundly angry brother, and his timid sister-in-law. Meanwhile, the more time Louis spends with his unknowing family, the more his time runs out.
Major Players:
It’s Only the End of the World was written and directed by Xavier Dolan, based on a play by late French playwright Jean-Luc Lagarce. Dolan has previously won acclaim at Cannes with his films I Killed My Mother and Mommy. Gaspard Ulliel, a César-winning French actor, stars as Louis. Four-time César-winning French actress Nathalie Baye plays Louis’s mother Martine, Oscar winner Marion Cotillard plays Louis’s sister-in-law Catherine, César-winning actor Vincent Cassel plays Louis’s brother Antoine, and award-winning actress Léa Seydoux plays Louis’s sister, Suzanne.
What the Critics are Saying:
This foreign film has not amassed enough reviews to have an accurate ranking on Metacritic or Rotten Tomatoes, but the reviews that do exist highlight its excruciating and cathartic nature. The Telegraph’s Tim Robey notes, “The experience is frequently infuriating, but it’s quite clearly supposed to be – it’s about hell being the other people in your own family.” The Guardian’s Peter Bradshaw calls the film “histrionic and claustrophobic: deliberately oppressive and pretty well pop-eyed in its madness – and yet a brilliant, stylised and hallucinatory evocation of family dysfunction.” However, some critics have found the film’s harshness difficult and clichéd. Eric Kohn of IndieWire writes that the film “unfurls like an outline for a formulaic story of constant bickering and resentment” and that Dolan has “crafted the semblance of a substantial movie that never quite gets where it was supposed to go.”
Possible Nominations:
Best Foreign Language Film