Edward Gibbon would be proud.
Arcand crafts a wonderful narrative here with four main elements: The men talking, the women talking, men and women together, and flashbacks. The men are philanderers, obsessed with sex, cooking a decadent meal, teaching the youth their unholy ways. The women are just as obsessed but with nominally different sensibilities. Notice how they're working out the whole time, concerned with body, sustaining life, attracting men.
When they come together of course decorum is king, and only through flashbacks do we get punctuations of truth.
This is a very good movie and a pleasure to watch. Arcand manages to write with a playwright's ear and a film director's brain. But, without Barbarian Invasions it really is an incomplete experience.
Arcand crafts a wonderful narrative here with four main elements: The men talking, the women talking, men and women together, and flashbacks. The men are philanderers, obsessed with sex, cooking a decadent meal, teaching the youth their unholy ways. The women are just as obsessed but with nominally different sensibilities. Notice how they're working out the whole time, concerned with body, sustaining life, attracting men.
When they come together of course decorum is king, and only through flashbacks do we get punctuations of truth.
This is a very good movie and a pleasure to watch. Arcand manages to write with a playwright's ear and a film director's brain. But, without Barbarian Invasions it really is an incomplete experience.