The Barbarian Invasions (no 67)

by Allan Fish

(Canada 2003 99m) DVD1/2

Aka. Les Invasions Barbares

Dreaming of Ines Orsini’s naked thighs

p  Denise Robert, Daniel Louis  d/w  Denys Arcand  ph  Guy Dufaux  ed  Isebelle Dedieu  m  Pierre Aviat  art  François Seguin

Rémy Girard (Remy), Stephane Rousseau (Sebastien), Marie-Josée Croze (Nathalie), Marina Hands (Gaelle), Dorothee Berryman (Louise), Dominique Michel (Dominique), Johanne Marie Tremblay (Sister Constance), Louise Portal (Diane), Mitsou Gelinas,

Of all the critically well-received films of the eighties, surely Denys Arcand’s 1986 adult conversation piece The Decline of the American Empire would be near the bottom of any list of films to which there would be a sequel.  Yet that’s just what this Oscar winner is, and many more things besides.  It’s perhaps more accurate to say that in American, the characters of Remy, Louise, Diane, et al, were still on their journey of life.  In Invasions, they are approaching what R.C.Sheriff once referred to as journey’s end.

            Remy is a fifty something professor at a Canadian university who has to come to terms with his own mortality when he is diagnosed with terminal cancer.  He has lived apart from his wife for fifteen years, his daughter Sylvaine is currently out at sea in the Pacific sailing a yacht and his son Sebastien is a financial whiz kid in London.  When Sebastien returns to take care of his father, there is hostility for his father’s continual sexual indiscretions, but Sebastien nonetheless agrees to look up all his father’s old friends to allow them to make his last few days amongst his happiest.

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