The most recent film by Xavier Dolan — and a major prize winner at Cannes this year — is one intense experience. The ingredients: an estranged son returning home (to mother, sister, brother and sister-in-law) for the first time in more than a decade to let them know he is terminally ill; a family that is so torn and pained that he is not afforded the opportunity to say much of anything, let alone the message he wants to deliver; the great actor Vincent Cassel (as the older brother) whose gradually increasing words of anger are frightening; and frequent close-ups that puts the viewer in the thick of the emotional action. Impressive filmmaking. (Subtitled.)
