Les Invasions barbares (2003) - film review

When he learns that his father, Rémy, is in the final stages of terminal cancer, businessman Sébastien reluctantly hastens to his bedside in a Montreal hospital.  After years of estrangement, the reunion is far from friendly, but Sébastien’s mother persuades him to stay and help make his father’s last few days as comfortable as possible.  Sébastien’s ready money allows Rémy to move into a specially prepared room in the hospital and to receive a supply of heroine to ease the suffering.  For the latter, Sébastien is helped by a junkie, Nathalie, whose life is also marked by a pain for which hard drugs is the only solution.  As Sébastien rounds up Rémy’s old friends to visit him, the dying man appears finally to accept his approaching death with equanimity.

Les Invasion barbares is the long overdue sequel to Denys Arcand’s critically acclaimed 1986 film Le Déclin de l’empire américain.  Seventeen years on, the characters of that earlier Canadian film are brought together in a poignant drama that tackles the process of dying, a subject that traditionally cinema has largely failed to do justice.  Whilst not as satisfying as Arcand’s earlier film, Les Invasion barbares still manages to be an engaging, emotionally intense work – perhaps a tad too intellectual for its own good in a few places, but still having great impact, thanks to a well-honed script and some fine acting.   As the dying father and one-time libertine, Rémy Girard is touchingly comical and portrays his character’s situation with great conviction and emotional sensitivity.  Marie-Josée Croze is also noted for her sympathetic portrayal of a young drug addict.  Although controversial, the film makes a valuable contribution to the debate over whether the palliative use of hard drugs to ease suffering in the final stages of a terminal disease.  Les Invasion barbares was an international success, winning not just the Oscar for the Best Foreign Language Film in 2004, but also the equally coveted Best Film César in the same year, the first Canadian film to do so.

© James Travers 2006

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