The Canadian director Xavier Dolan said that when he originally read the play, he felt lost and cited its style and the aggressive nature of the characters. He later reread it and said, "One day, I don't know what it was, I pulled it off my shelf and suddenly understood and appreciated this weird and verbose writing style."[6]
Dolan described the extensive work required to adapt the stage play for film:[7]
I tried to keep the idiosyncrasies and the singularity of Lagarce's vernacular as much as I could.... The play is verbose, the language nervous, and prolix. The characters correct their own grammar constantly, beating themselves up, rewording their own sentences. I kept all that as is, basically - but evidently had to cut down many monologues in size, and some episodes were of course dropped. What was really reshaped is the structure. The second half of the play is almost entirely abstract. Characters talk to everyone and no one, all on stage, yet in different places.... It was very theatrical, I guess, and didn’t provide us with a proper build-up. The climax in the play is only between the lead role and his brother, and is 8 pages long.... So I had to recycle bits and pieces from earlier scenes, omitted scenes and scenes I invented from scratch in order to write a second half, and the end.
Dolan's film won the Grand Prix at the 2016 Cannes Film Festival and other honours.[8]
