Friends from the History Department at the University of Montreal come together for a dinner party. While the men prepare the meal, the women work out at the gym. In both groups, the conversation returns repeatedly to sex…
Described at the time as “a French-Canadian Big Chill” (though Roger Ebert suggested it was closer to My Dinner with Andre), The Decline of the American Empire is recognized as one of the greatest of all Canadian films. A acute and funny erotic comedy of manners, the movie diagnoses how throughout history decadence and solipsism have typically been a precursor to social collapse.
Denys Arcand’s Academy Award-winning sequel, The Barbarian Invasions, also shows at VIFF Centre this week.
Here is a movie where everybody talks about nothing but sex, and the real subject is wit […] The movie is wise, deep, and painful, and it is filled with words.
Roger Ebert
A deviously sardonic comedy of carnal manners.
Variety
A frequently funny, unrepressed meditation on midnight in North America.
Rita Kempley, Washington Post
Denys Arcand
Dominique Michel, Dorothee Berryman, Remy Girard, Pierre Curzi, Louise Portal
Canada
1986
In French with English subtitles
8 Genie Awards, including Best Picture, Director and Screenplay
Book Tickets
Friday April 11
Saturday April 12
Tuesday April 15
Indigenous & Community Access
Credits
Screenwriter
Denys Arcand
Cinematography
Guy Dufaux
Editor
Monique Fortier
Original Music
François Dompierre
Production Design
Gaudeline Sauriol
Art Director
Gaudeline Sauriol
Also in This Series
Canadian Film Week spotlights 18 features, including six Vancouver premieres and four brand new films from BC filmmakers, plus returning classics, new favourites, and free screenings on National Canadian Film Day.
Sweet Summer Pow Wow
After the local hit The Great Salish Heist, writer-director Darrell Dennis proves his versatility with this charming love story about two young people who meet cute on BC's Pow Wow circuit. Her mom wants her to become a lawyer, but Jinny loves to dance...
The Decline of the American Empire
Friends from the History Department at the University of Montreal come together for a dinner party. While the men prepare the meal, the women work out at the gym. In both groups, the conversation returns repeatedly to sex...
Village Keeper
In Karen Chapman’s sensitive debut feature, a widowed mother desperate to shelter her teenage daughter and son from a surge of gun violence in Toronto takes it upon herself to cleanse the blood from crime scenes in her Lawrence Heights neighbourhood.
The Barbarian Invasions
Arcand's belated sequel finds his erstwhile "sensual socialist" facing terminal cancer and trying to make peace with his financier son. This is one of the most acclaimed Canadian films ever made, garlanded all over the world.
Incandescence
Filmed across the Okanagan before, during and after several devastating fires by veteran non-fiction filmmakers Nova Ami and Velcrow Ripper (Metamorphosis; ScaredSacred), Incandescence is a mesmerizing cinematic contemplation of the power of wildfires.