I thought "Mommy" was fantastic despite its overlength. That's the problem with Dolan, he's so into himself that he just doesn't know when to stop. Snip off 30 minutes from that film and it's one of the best of 2014.
"It's Only the End of the World", based on Jean-Luc Lagarce’s play of the same name, stars Gaspard Ulliel as a terminally ill writer who decides to return home after a long absence to tell his quirky, dysfunctional family that he is going to die. Dolan’s love for the play is obvious, so much so that he banked on this adaptation amidst skyrocketed post-“Mommy” expectations.
It's narcissistic filmmaking at its very worse. He doesn't even give his actors the time to act or breath life into their roles because his camera seems to always be constantly moving in every direction. Also, don't get me started on the editing - one of the worst examples of editing I have seen in a movie. The dialogue is also incoherent with a lot of pauses and "umms" thrown in for good measure.
I was born and raised in Montreal before moving to the states and so I have met Dolan quite a few times in my days. I have long advocated the fact that, although many of his films like "Mommy" and "Laurence Anyways" are quite good, he needs a stinker to snap him out of the volatile narcissism and bring him back down to earth a little. He is not god, but he acts like it. It seems that even though this film was completely panned at Cannes and was about to be named by most critics as the worst film in competition, that is until Sean Penn's horrendous "The Last Face" screened, the fact that the jury gave Dolan the Grand Jury Prize will not deter him one bit and he will continue to make high brow, pompous and self-indulgent cinema until he addresses the problems that lay in his filmmaking.
Dolan is already working on his follow-up to “It’s Only the End of the World,” which will also be his American directorial debut. “The Life of John F. Donovan,” starring Jessica Chastain, Kit Harington, Taylor Kitsch, Kathy Bates, Susan Sarandon, Natalie Portman, Nicholas Hoult, and Thandie Newton is gearing up to shoot this summer.
If you've read this column for a while, you know the drill: I spitball Cannes every month from now until April, updating the latest intel and trying to figure out what will be in competition, vying for the Palme d'Or.