It's Only The End Of The World (2016) -
Gaspard Ulliel was a beautiful man and his loss really is very sad. I could have bathed in his beautiful blue eyes for eternity and I believe that he could have gone on to do great things in film.
In this one he played a very quiet man with something to say to a family of passionate and overbearing personalities.
The passionate shouting, whether from angry Antoine or just the general back and forth between the others, was quite intense, however compared to the egg shell treading that they were all doing right from the start, at least it brought some drama to it. There's also a lot of everybody being "désolé!" (Sorry) all the time.
Gaspard as Louis is so quiet that Vincent Cassel as his brother, Antoine, comes across very aggressive and knowing the reason for Louis' return home, you can't help but be on his side, which makes you dislike Antoine automatically.
The ladies of the film all seem to have a strange crush on Louis though, whether that's his Mother, Sister or Sister In Law, there is something very incestuous about the whole thing. Perhaps it is just that French is the language of love, but even my Mother, sitting next to me playing Solitaire, looked up and said "I thought that was his sister, they're a bit close?"
Knowing in advance that it was a play, it was easy to see those elements of monologue and one on one interactions as they would have been on stage. I could almost visualise the sets and smell the greasepaint at some points.
I assume that the producers/writers doctored the original story to avoid the costs of retro 80's/90's sets, costumes and so on, but I feel that the tale might have lost something in the process.
Away from home for 12 years, the reason for that is never made clear. The family knew that he was gay and had no issues with that, although it would have made more sense if they hadn't known and it had been the reason for his absence, feeling uncomfortable about coming out to them and sharing his new life in the city.
I can only imagine that in the play that the film is based on, which would have been set much earlier and written as it was during the peak years of the AIDS crisis by Jean-Luc Lagarce, who died of the disease, that in that version, he wasn't out to his family. Perhaps that was what had caused the friction between them all, because I don't feel that his absence was enough of an issue to match their animosity, especially his brother, Antoine's. I also can't see why any other "Terminal Illness" as it is described in the blurb would be so hard to tell everyone about.
And in some respects I think that it might have been better not to know what he was trying to tell them, having read the synopsis.
I could see all of the questions his family asked that stumped him, because he thought his family meant something else, as if they already knew his secret and it took away from the building tension. It's like watching 'The Sixth Sense' and knowing that Bruce Willis is dead. You can clearly see that nobody else is interacting with him all the way through. It's spoilers in some way.
That might not be the most comparable film or moment but it kind of gets the point across.
The problem being of course, that if you didn't know what Louis wanted to say, the whole film would become a lot of drama for nothing.
The British equivalent of this film would probably be something like 'Secrets & Lies' by Mike Leigh and would have starred Jim Broadbent and Brenda Blethen, with maybe David Thewlis as Louis, but the French delivered it here in their sexy way and with a more serious tone and although I wouldn't rush to see it again, it was very well made.
Personally, I preferred the American film '1985' which is almost exactly the same story, as at least with that one you get some resolution, whereas this one seemed to leave the ending not just open, but gaping and made all the more confusing if you hadn't read what the film was about.
It's hard to score as Gaspard really did grab me, but the story and the shouting wore me down and Vincent Cassel was positively nasty in it. It might have been nice to see a bit more gaiety in it too, both in happiness and gayness. That is what I tuned in for in the first place after all.
560.01/1000.
Gaspard Ulliel was a beautiful man and his loss really is very sad. I could have bathed in his beautiful blue eyes for eternity and I believe that he could have gone on to do great things in film.
In this one he played a very quiet man with something to say to a family of passionate and overbearing personalities.
The passionate shouting, whether from angry Antoine or just the general back and forth between the others, was quite intense, however compared to the egg shell treading that they were all doing right from the start, at least it brought some drama to it. There's also a lot of everybody being "désolé!" (Sorry) all the time.
Gaspard as Louis is so quiet that Vincent Cassel as his brother, Antoine, comes across very aggressive and knowing the reason for Louis' return home, you can't help but be on his side, which makes you dislike Antoine automatically.
The ladies of the film all seem to have a strange crush on Louis though, whether that's his Mother, Sister or Sister In Law, there is something very incestuous about the whole thing. Perhaps it is just that French is the language of love, but even my Mother, sitting next to me playing Solitaire, looked up and said "I thought that was his sister, they're a bit close?"
Knowing in advance that it was a play, it was easy to see those elements of monologue and one on one interactions as they would have been on stage. I could almost visualise the sets and smell the greasepaint at some points.
I assume that the producers/writers doctored the original story to avoid the costs of retro 80's/90's sets, costumes and so on, but I feel that the tale might have lost something in the process.
Away from home for 12 years, the reason for that is never made clear. The family knew that he was gay and had no issues with that, although it would have made more sense if they hadn't known and it had been the reason for his absence, feeling uncomfortable about coming out to them and sharing his new life in the city.
I can only imagine that in the play that the film is based on, which would have been set much earlier and written as it was during the peak years of the AIDS crisis by Jean-Luc Lagarce, who died of the disease, that in that version, he wasn't out to his family. Perhaps that was what had caused the friction between them all, because I don't feel that his absence was enough of an issue to match their animosity, especially his brother, Antoine's. I also can't see why any other "Terminal Illness" as it is described in the blurb would be so hard to tell everyone about.
And in some respects I think that it might have been better not to know what he was trying to tell them, having read the synopsis.
I could see all of the questions his family asked that stumped him, because he thought his family meant something else, as if they already knew his secret and it took away from the building tension. It's like watching 'The Sixth Sense' and knowing that Bruce Willis is dead. You can clearly see that nobody else is interacting with him all the way through. It's spoilers in some way.
That might not be the most comparable film or moment but it kind of gets the point across.
The problem being of course, that if you didn't know what Louis wanted to say, the whole film would become a lot of drama for nothing.
The British equivalent of this film would probably be something like 'Secrets & Lies' by Mike Leigh and would have starred Jim Broadbent and Brenda Blethen, with maybe David Thewlis as Louis, but the French delivered it here in their sexy way and with a more serious tone and although I wouldn't rush to see it again, it was very well made.
Personally, I preferred the American film '1985' which is almost exactly the same story, as at least with that one you get some resolution, whereas this one seemed to leave the ending not just open, but gaping and made all the more confusing if you hadn't read what the film was about.
It's hard to score as Gaspard really did grab me, but the story and the shouting wore me down and Vincent Cassel was positively nasty in it. It might have been nice to see a bit more gaiety in it too, both in happiness and gayness. That is what I tuned in for in the first place after all.
560.01/1000.