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THE BARBARIAN INVASIONS
Directed by: Denys Arcand.
Produced by: Daniel Louis & Denise Robert.
Written by: Denys Arcand.
Director of Photography: Guy Dufaux.
Edited by: Isabelle Dedieu.
Music by: Pierre Aviat.
Released by: Miramax.
Country of Origin: Canada/France. 95 min. Rated: R.
With: Rémy Girard, Stéphane Rousseau, Dorothée Berryman & Marie-Josée Croze.

Denys Arcand’s The Decline of the American Empire (1986) centers on sexual banter and betrayal among an elite group of academics. Nearly 20 years later, the cast is reunited in this emotionally remote sequel. Rémy (Girard), the roly-poly philanderer, is now ailing from cancer. His divorced wife Louise (Berryman) puts aside her bitterness and summons their wealthy son Sébastian (Rousseau), who is estranged from his father, and their old friends to cheer Rémy up and say farewell. Sébastian spares no expense in improving his father’s care, including bribery and scoring drugs to ease his father’s pain. He pleads with family friend Diane to call her heroin-addicted daughter Nathalie (Croze) to buy Rémy drugs. Nathalie, thus, becomes Rémy’s unlikely friend. As in Decline, the characters cloak themselves in words. Rémy, a history professor of bored undergraduate students, declares “The history of mankind is a history of horrors,” and sees 9/11 as the beginning of a great barbarian invasion. But the glibness of the erudite ensemble (“Is there an ‘ism that we haven’t worshipped?”) keeps the viewer at a distance. However, the supporting character of the angry and indifferent Nathalie galvanizes the film. Her growing attraction to Sébastian steals the spotlight from Rémy. Croze’s intense, yet subtle performance won the best actress award at this year’s Cannes Film Festival. Familiarity with the earlier film is not necessarily, since most of the storylines from Decline are referred to in passing. Even the interaction between wife Louise and former friend Dominique, whose affair with Rémy was a crushing blow in Decline, is anticlimactically smoothed over here. And underwhelming is any film that uses footage of the attack on the World Trade Center for one of its few emotional jolts. Kent Turner
November 21, 2003