Word: arcand
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...national cinema. This country of 33 million has left less of an artistic footprint than, say, Hong Kong (6 million population) in the 80s or Sweden (4 million) in the Ingmar Bergman years. The provinces have produced a few notable directors - David Cronenberg and Atom Egoyan from Ontario, Denys Arcand from Quebec, Guy Maddin from Manitoba - but their careers date back to the 60s, 70s or 80s. Other Canadians, like directors Norman Jewison and Paul Haggis and a slew of comedy stars, have packed their bags and emigrated to the dominant movie culture...
This focus is especially poignant because 17 years ago Denys Arcand directed a film entitled The Decline of the American Empire, starring the same actors as Rémy and all his friends. With the reintroduction of these characters, Arcand crafts a comparison between the atmosphere among the youth of French Canada in the mid-’80s and that of present...
...Denys Arcand's The Barbarian Invasions, a multiple prizewinner at Cannes, is a comic valentine about a dying man too incorrigibly full of life to give it up. Remy was also a sexual obsessive. This is supposed to make him an endearing character, deserving of reconciliation with his family and all those who were amused or abused by his goatish charm. Old friends appear; old enemies turn wildly generous; unexpected epiphanies are sprinkled on Remy like the holy water in last rites. Indeed, the movie's plot essentially stretches out the last few minutes of It's a Wonderful Life...
...Arcand (The Decline of the American Empire) has a gift for witty dialogue but a weakness for force-feeding his story with sentiment. References to ancient holocausts and to 9/11 simply expose the intent of a director who will do anything to touch his audience--with a sweet gesture or a cattle prod. And in a comedy of manners, that behavior is very impolite. --By Richard Corliss
...ambitious mediocrities - all had the tone of apocalyptic despair. Brazilian director Hector Babenco ended his Carandiru with the slaughter of innocents in a São Paulo jail. Austrian Michael Haneke depicted the moral chaos attending an unspecified disaster in his testy The Time of the Wolf. Even Denys Arcand's genial The Barbarian Invasions, a French-Canadian billet-doux to a dear, dying scoundrel, featured a jarring clip of a hijacked plane crashing into the World Trade Center. And the two main Palme d'Or contenders showed how the world could end in America: with a bang. Dogville - like...