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.

            And it’s this emotional centre that gives the film its heart.  Of course it’s about many other things, not the least sexual and actual politics, and it is adult enough not to treat its audience with politically correct kid gloves.  It also manages to steer clear of the schmaltzy sentimentality that ruins all Hollywood attempts at such things, allowing its doomed hero a dignified send off, dignified enough to leave the audience reaching for the Kleenex without being directed there by obtrusive narrative signposts.  By the time we reach the tear-inducing but strangely uplifting finale, and our hero is allowed to die by friends for whom euthanasia is no obstacle, we come away with the feeling of a life justified, if not through himself but in how he lit up the lives of those around him.  In many ways it recalls Capra’s It’s a Wonderful Life, and is in no way less affecting, despite being poles apart in their target audience. 

            Much was said of needing to know the earlier film to truly grasp the material, and for sure a recent viewing of American is a help.  Yet that is like saying that Olivier’s Henry V is not as rich an experience without knowing of Shakespeare’s Richard II and Henry IV plays.  It’s true, but in the end irrelevant.  It’s the real emotions and real feelings of these characters that win you over, that and the wonderfully autumnal yet warm glow with which Guy Dufaux’s camera bathes proceedings.  And for those who see the dying man’s constant infidelities, and the young Nathalie’s drug addiction, as unforgivable vices, one can only feel pity for anyone approaching such a film with such a narrow mind. 

            In spite of all Arcand’s wonderful touches, however, the cast really give the film its perfect dressing.  Many were familiar from the earlier film, but their work here is arguably even richer, instilling these beloved characters with an extra depth of feeling which only experience can bring.  Berryman, Rousseau, Tremblay and Portal are all superb (with a nice cameo from well-endowed pop princess Mitsou as a shrewish wife with a passion for Ikea), but two performances particularly grab you; Croze as the poor junkie falling once more for her childhood crush is heartrending and, ultimately, doomed to unhappiness, and Girard, as the dying protagonist goes a long way to showing just how easy it would be to be intoxicated with this man’s spirit.  His tutoring methods for his young female students may be as his wife said (“kneel down, open wide, don’t bite!”), but he imbues the people he meets with something much richer, what can only equate to a perfect joie de vivre, a life which we are sad to leave behind when the credits finally roll.