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Barbarian
Invasions, The
(2003)
Starring:
Rémy Girard, Stéphane Rousseau
Director:
Denys Arcand
Rating: R
Studio:
Miramax
Release Date:
11.21.03
Review
Posted: 03.05.04
Spoilers:
Minor
By
Howard Schumann
"It's paradoxical but
living grows on you" - Professor Rémy
Denys Arcand's The Barbarian
Invasions is a touching film about family healing that won the
award for Best Screenplay and Best Actress for Marie-Josée Croze at
the last Cannes Film Festival and has been nominated for Best Foreign
Film at the upcoming Golden Globe Awards. Set in a crowded hospital in
Montreal and on Lake Memphremagog in Southern Quebec, a group of seven
friends and lovers gather to say farewell to History professor and
unabashed womanizer, Rémy (Rémy Girard) who is slowly dying of cancer.
The film reprises the characters first introduced in Arcand's The
Decline of the American Empire seventeen years ago and they come
across as real people honestly searching for meaning and
reconciliation. Though the film is about death and dying, it is filled
with intelligence, humor, high energy, and commitment to life.
The film centers on Rémy's estranged
relationship with his son Sebastian (stand-up comic Stéphane Rousseau)
a millionaire London businessman. When Sebastian comes to Montreal
with his fiancée (Marina Hands), years of resentment against his
father boil to the surface. Rémy apparently was not an exemplary
father figure. He cheated on his wife, over indulged himself in
hedonistic pleasures, and offered less than the support his children
needed. Rémy, a socialist, considers his son a "puritanical
capitalist" and one who portends the coming "barbarian" invasions.
Sebastian resents Rémy for his womanizing and calls him "contentious".
In spite of this resentment, however, he starts throwing money around
to try and make his father's final days more comfortable, in a way
subtly letting his father know that money can buy anything.
Sebastian "persuades" hospital
administrators to provide a private room for him on an unused floor
and bribes union leaders to fix it up. He enlists Diane's daughter,
Nathalie (Marie-Josée Croze), a tortured heroin addict into providing
drugs to alleviate Rémy's pain. This allows Arcand to throw in some
digs at the Canadian medical system and the puritanical drug laws in
both Canada and the U.S. that deny adequate relief for a patient's
pain. Sebastian contacts Remy's old friends from the university and
brings them to the hospital.
These include Remy's tolerant former
wife Louise (Dorothée Berryman), department head and ex-lover
Dominique (Dominique Michel), and three fellow professors: Pierre
(Pierre Curzi), Claude (Yves Jacques), and Diane (Louise Portal).
During his hospital stay, Rémy is comforted by Sister Constance (Johanne
Marie Tremblay) who puts up with his anti-Catholic remarks and tells
him to "embrace the mystery".
When
Rémy is released, all meet at a cottage by a lake for a final group
discussion that includes jokes about sex and past failures and
discussions about 9/11, American cultural domination, and all the
"isms" they once believed in. Though still full of spirit, Rémy admits
that he feels as if his life never measured up to his dreams. The
Barbarian Invasions is not a perfect film by any means but is one
of the strongest Canadian films of recent years. Though some of the
dialogue is strained, underneath there is a humanity that allows us to
connect with our feelings about our own mortality and our
relationships with those we care about. It is often hard to reconcile
the robustly alive Rémy with our pictures of a man dying of cancer but
Girard is powerfully effective in the role and I went from quiet
distaste of his amorality to full acceptance of who he is by the end
of the film. Though the conclusion is emotional, it is not trite or
overly sentimental but allows us to access the deep place of silence
within ourselves and embrace the mystery.
Film
Grade: A-
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