The Barbarian Invasions

Undoubtedly the most accomplished film-maker in Quebec – not that there’s vast competition for that accolade – Denys Arcand’s output is always worth a look, though you need to go back to 1990’s gob-smackingly pretentious but hugely entertaining Jesus Of Montreal to find the last time one of Arcand’s films commanded significant international attention. The Barbarian Invasions – sweet, melancholic and as uplifting as they come – might well break that spell, and has already won a Best Screenplay award at Cannes.
On the face of it, Barbarians might appear to be a typical terminal-illness tearjerker – which it arguably is, but there’s more than enough wit, vibrancy and poignancy in the script to overcome any objections. Its plot concerns Remy, an expiring Marxist university professor, serial womaniser and flawed family man, who is on the way out with terminal cancer, and whose nearest and dearest are gathered together for his final days. His estranged son Sebastien, much to dad’s dismay, has turned into a millionaire (‘My son is a puritanical and ambitious capitalist!’) and generally the uptight opposite of his lazily debauched father.
Despite their mutual near-hostility, Sebastien flies home from London, and goes flat-out to make Remy’s final days as pleasant as possible, which involves enlisting the help of an ex’s junkie daughter in order to score bags of heroin for the old man. As is the time-honoured tradition with Francophone cinema, little of huge consequence happens throughout, with everything hinging on the flow of existential/philosophical conversation between the old man, his like-minded old friends and assorted assembled mistresses.
However unappealing all that might sound, most of the dialogue is a joy, albeit typically ponderous, self-analytical and Gallic. Remy Girard’s wondrously effervescent performance as the smacked-up geriatric steals the show, but flaws of any kind are hard to locate throughout the film, and if Invasions cranks up the sentimentality a little towards the end, it’s more than earned the right to. Easily the finest film to come out of Canada since…can we get back to you on that one?

99 mins. Cert: IFI members. Opens February 20