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
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.
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.
Universal Language
In a wintery, Farsi-speaking city that’s equal measures Winnipeg and Tehran, storylines entangle and the concepts of space, time, and identity grow increasingly opaque. Inventive and absurd, Rankin's poetic fable reminds us that Winnipeg is a wonderland. Rated: G
Are We Done Now?
Down River director Ben Immanuel returns with a wry, self-aware Covid comedy in which a socially distant Vancouver documentarian checks in with a stressed-out therapist (Gabrielle Miller) and several of her patients over the course of the pandemic.