An average movie

Even though this movie had been a major critical failure when it had been finally released after months of delay, since I have a weak spot for Xavier Dolan’s work, I was still quite eager to check it out. Well, unfortunately, I’m afraid it really deserved its poor reputation. Indeed, even though ‘Juste la fin du monde’ had received some mixed reviews, I actually loved the damned thing. In my opinion, Dolan had delivered his best movie but this follow-up which was probably his most ambitious project so far was however a huge f*cking mess. First of all, it is not surprising that the guy had spent a year editing this flick. I mean, narratively speaking, it all made sense but it was never really smooth. On top of that, to be honest, I was rather annoyed by the fact that at least 80% of the shots were some massive close-ups. Concerning the story, well, there were in fact 3 of them, one of them dealing with Rupert Turner has a kid obsessing about his favourite actor, one of them dealing again with Rupert Turner has a young man still obsessing about his favourite actor and another one dealing with the fall of John F. Donovan, the actual actor. Maybe it would have worked better if they had focused on only one story thread (I doubt it though) but this mix was certainly misguided. For example, when you get to see Donovan’s bits, you are supposed to believe that, from time to time, he did write some letters to a 11 year old kid but it didn’t fit at all into this character and what he was going through. As usual with Dolan, there were some major mother-son conflicts, two of them in fact, resulting in some decent scenes and I also think that the cast was solid in spite of the material but the damned thing never really worked. Anyway, to conclude, even though he had a very strong track-record so far, Xavier Dolan falters for the first time, big time, but even if you should avoid this movie, you should definitely check his other movies which are all worth a look.