a wolf angel is not a good angel

In today’s news that’s so obvious only a blinding idiot wouldn’t have thought of it beforehand: seeing a movie about a 50 year old dying when you’re already weepy is not a good idea.

That said, Les Invasions Barbares was very good. I was somewhat disappointed in Marie-Josée Croze’s performance; she made me think, just briefly, of Drew Barrymore playing a heroin addict. I can’t explain how, and I know she won an award for this role. I think she’s a good actress: I particularly liked her work in Maelström (see this movie, too). This one just struck me as odd: perhaps I was expecting something else.

I’m not sure how to describe it. The acting was very good. If you can, listen in French and read the subtitles; whoever did the translations oddly left out all the Montreal place names and just called everything “suburbs” or “the East End” (in no way is the Plateau in the east). The way the wordplay about blowjobs was handled was wonderful. And you always miss something when it’s dubbed, I find. (Since I often am not in the mood for subtitles, this can be limiting.)

I can’t think of what to say. (Well, except for some shame that I’ve not seen The Decline of the Roman Empire; watching it backwards might be interesting, and in any case I’ll need to do that.)

It’s got a nice balance, a certain ambiguity (like Capturing the Friedmans, which I also just saw). The socialist bon vivants are dying; the capitalist techy son is alive. Arcand pokes fun at all of it, of course, and the socialism more than anything (I will say that the hospitals here aren’t as bad as it makes it seem in the movie, the unions not as corrupt). Mostly the film celebrates friendship and enjoying life (which seems to be having friends, sex, food and wine), though it’s not as hedonistic as it sounds. It’s an intelligent movie, but it’s not pretentious about that. It’s a comedy, but it’s serious. It’s a drama, but it’s funny. (I hate the term dramedy.) It’s got great social commentary (especially about Quebec society — the priest doesn’t know why suddenly the churches emptied out?), but it’s more than just commentary, there’s a story.

Oh, I’m crying again. See the movie.

This entry was posted on Thursday, August 26th, 2004 at 1:50 pm and is filed under screened. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.