Xavier Dolan’s It’s Only The End of the World earns mixed reviews at Cannes

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When Xavier Dolan was a member of the Cannes jury last year, he tried to separate himself from the typical media hype and noise that surrounds the film festival.

"Being on the jury was the greatest experience of my life, artistically," Dolan told The Globe last month. "The conversations we had were so honest. We didn't talk much about what we hated – we know the crowd in Cannes can be quite awful when they hate a movie – so we focused on things we loved. There was no political agenda, just everyone being sincere and speaking with their hearts."

The Québécois filmmaker surely must be hoping this year's jury is operating on a similar wave length – looking to their hearts, rather than monitoring the deafening critical pulse – after his new film, Juste la fin du monde (It's Only the End of the World), debuted to decidedly mixed reviews on Wednesday.

"Coming on the heels of his 2014 art-house sensation [Mommy], Dolan had access to bigger budgets, an international pool of actors and, for the first time, significantly heightened expectations. But It's Only The End of the World capitalizes on none of those things, instead remaining so idiosyncratic and insular that it will only really appeal to his most ardent fans," wrote Ben Croll for The Wrap.

The Hollywood Reporter labelled it "a disappointment, even for the Dolan faithful," while Variety called it "a frequently excruciating dramatic experience."

The drama – the sixth film of the 27-year-old director's career, and the fifth to play the festival – focuses on a gay playwright who returns to his rural hometown in France to announce his pending death. Featuring an all-star French cast including Oscar winner Marion Cotillard, Lea Seydoux and Vincent Cassel, the film went into Cannes as Canada's lone Palme d'Or contender. (The hype machine was also buoyed by the fact that Dolan's Mommy was almost a lock for the Palme in 2014, losing out to the Turkish drama Winter Sleep.)

Still, at a press conference Thursday, Dolan felt confident in his work. "I'm happy to be in Cannes with these people whom I love and this film, which I considered to be my best," Dolan said. "It's my most complete film."

There were also critics more receptive to Dolan's vision, with The Guardian calling the movie a "brilliant, stylized and hallucinatory evocation of family dysfunction."

Whatever the film's Cannes fate, Dolan is likely too busy working on his next project to worry about the mood on the Croisette. His English-language debut, The Death and Life of John F. Donovan – featuring Natalie Portman, Jessica Chastain and Kit Harington, is currently deep in pre-production.