Denys Arcand

  • Le règne de la beauté [An Eye for Beauty] (2014)

    Le règne de la beauté [An Eye for Beauty] (2014)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, December 2020) Writer-director Denys Arcand may be the reigning king of French-Canadian Oscar-winning movie directors (although Denis Villeneuve will get his someday), but not every single one of his films is equally important, and Le règne de la beauté ranks among the most trivial of them. Largely a story about a dull affair (woo, originality), it loses itself in pointless comments about beauty and architecture, even if the visual aspect of the film (which often takes place in Charlevoix’s natural landscapes) is a clear upgrade over Arcand’s previous work. The decent actors can’t do much with the material they’re given, because there’s simply not a whole lot there. The theme is tiresome, the treatment is pretentious and while I’m generally supportive of seeing more polished depictions of sex and nudity on-screen, it’s really not enough to make me any more sympathetic to the film in general. Sure, it’s watchable – but try to remember any specific details a few weeks later and we’ll talk.

  • La chute de l’empire américain [The Fall of the American Empire] (2018)

    La chute de l’empire américain [The Fall of the American Empire] (2018)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, June 2020) French-Canadian writer-director Denys Arcand certainly courts scrutiny by calling his thriller La chute de l’empire américain, considering that one of his landmark works (all the way to the Oscars) was called Le déclin de l’empire américain. Especially considering that it’s in no way a narrative sequel—while some Arcand veterans return in supporting roles, they don’t play the same characters and even the genre of the film is different—from social drama, we go to a small-scale thriller. But the bait-and-switch of the title aside, La chute de l’empire américain is a capable suspense film from a director who knows what he’s doing. It starts with a familiar thriller trope: what if an everyman came into possession of a large quantity of money generated through illegal means? This being said, Arcand being Arcand means that there’s no such thing as a simple thriller: his film is filled with philosophical, moral and social elements that go beyond the clichés. Solid character work and actors ensure that there’s a progressive attachment to the film, even as it goes from low crime to high finance (and, one would argue, higher crimes). Alexandre Landry turns in an appropriately nervous and awkward lead performance, while old-school pros like Remy Girard and Pierre Curzi round off the cast. Perhaps most surprising of all is how La chute de l’empire américain, after flirting with crime thriller, eventually makes its way to humanistic comedy, gradually dispensing with shades of gray to get to a luminous conclusion. Arcand plays with the genre idea that most people who lust after money eventually pay for it—by showing how some, with money, can choose generosity over greed. It’s a fun, entertaining, unusual watch: I would have liked a different, less flashy title, but the film itself is solid.

  • L’âge des ténèbres (2007)

    L’âge des ténèbres (2007)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, May 2020) There are movies that I probably should have seen earlier, and L’âge des ténèbres is one of them—a major French-Canadian movie, featuring a roster of circa-2007 working actors and with substantial science fiction plot elements tinged with dark comedy. It takes place in 2007’s near future with striking similarities to present-day 2020, what with technology-obsessed people and facemasks in schools and public transit. Its story revolves around a bureaucrat beset by middle-age ailments and escaping into reveries à la Walter Mitty. Denys Arcand is not subtle at all in presenting a non-stop carnival of modern problems and evidence of the fall of civilization—I normally wouldn’t be impressed by yet more suburban malaise, but there is something impressive and often hilarious in the completeness of Arcand’s vision. It gets funnier and funnier, as even the fantasies start turning against our protagonist. Lead actor Marc Labrèche is very good in the lead role, with a hangdog expression complementing an undeniable comic fluidity. Some of the background details are very good—although they may be lost on non-French-Canadian audiences, such as the dubious wisdom of setting up a government office in the Olympic stadium with its falling concrete beams (although this is alluded to). It’s fascinating that the protagonist would find an antithesis in incarnating fantasy to its fullest by going to a Renaissance Fair. Still, I’m not sure about the ending—I’d like to see at least once a film about midlife crisis that didn’t necessarily end with the protagonist quitting his job, trashing his car, leaving his marriage and ending up in a shack (admittedly one with a great view of the Saint Lawrence). Surely, there are ways to achieve a better synthesis of how to deal with modern ailments than to reject all of them. On a more serious note, L’âge des ténèbres is probably the movie that best represents (even with large discrepancies) the lowest point of my adult life around 40—fortunately, things are better now, and despite thinking that I should have seen it earlier, I’m actually happy that I’m seeing it today rather than a few years ago when I was in the thick of it.

  • Stardom (2000)

    Stardom (2000)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, September 2019) The interesting cinematic conceit on which Stardom is built remains intriguing twenty years later: What if we saw the rise and fall of a supermodel entirely through camera lenses, as if a mad fan collected her TV appearances and home videos in a compilation video? Jessica Paré convincingly stars as a Cornwall (ON) hockey player plucked out of obscurity to become a fashion supermodel, loving and leaving a trail of men in her wake (including a restaurateur played by Dan Aykroyd). Executed at the turn of the century and taking place in a media-saturated environment, Stardom has aged significantly more than many other movies of the time, but it’s already showing signs of being a period piece rather than being dated: the references dwell in the late-1990s, and a circa-2019 take would have more cell phones and social media than we could stand. It does take a few minutes to get used to the collage aspect of the film (save for a brief introduction and a quiet epilogue, we get “in the camera” early on and escape the structure of a typical narrative), but its effectiveness does start to build, especially when we realize that the years are accumulating and the scope of the story is going from Cornwall to New York and places beyond. Could it have been better? Well, yes—as much as it’s enjoyable to piece together the narrative of the protagonist’s life through indirect and often misleading footage, it’s not much of a story. The satire is fine but typical (news reports from the past two decades have made the same point over and over, cutting away from mass tragedy to celebrity gossip) while stock characters abound. Writer-director Denys Arcand does know what he’s doing, though, and the mixture of French-Canadian and English-Canadian actors (plus notables such as Frank Langella) is interesting in its own right. Intriguingly, Stardom does have its built-in distancing mechanism: as interesting as it can be for movie geeks to see a film told through surface footage, there aren’t that many pathways to what the character is thinking or feeling: This is akin to a second-grade biography made of media clippings rather than interviews with the subject. Our protagonist is often used by other people making their own points, which is part of the lesson. Still, Stardom is more than worth a look on a purely experimental level, as an exploration of what cinema can do once it gets away from its own conventions. I’m a bit surprised that the film remains obscure outside Canada, but that’s the nature of non-stardom.

  • Le déclin de l’empire américain (1986)

    Le déclin de l’empire américain (1986)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Second Viewing, In French, On Cable TV, July 2019) In French-Canadian circles, Le déclin de l’empire américain is as close to a classic as it comes—it was a big box-office success, was nominated for an Oscar, spawned two sequels (the second of which actually won an Oscar, still Canada’s sole Foreign-Language Oscar), became one of French-Canada’s most successful cultural export, made writer-director Denys Arcand a superstar and marked a generation. I recall seeing it as a teen, but missed (or forgot) much of the film’s meaning until seeing it again. The very strange thing about it is that in many ways, it’s an anti-movie. Its plot could fit on a napkin with enough space left to wipe your mouth. There isn’t much in terms of cinematography (although some of the camera shots are quite nice). But what the film does have is a nearly steady stream of dialogue from beginning to the end, alternating between the low and the high. Le déclin de l’empire américain is about a few characters, most of them intellectual, university professors, preparing for a weekend at the cottage and then chatting during the weekend. Much of the dialogue is about sex, and the remainder about highbrow intellectual concerns spanning history, philosophy, sociology, and non-specific politics. There is a definite The Big Chill sensibility to the way the characters all congregate as friends for a weekend in a secluded location, but that’s a misleading impression, as these characters have secrets that they’re keeping from one other, and the amiable companionship detonates late in the film. But that’s the only bit of plotting in a film that’s meant to be heard for the dialogue going from scabrous to scholarly in the blink of an eye. I guess that as a cultural ambassador, it doesn’t hurt for French-Canadians to have been portrayed as lusty intellectuals across the globe—although I’d caution that most of us are far less obnoxious than the hedonistic degenerates shown here.