THE DECLINE OF THE AMERICAN EMPIRE (49)

Directed by: Denys Arcand (1986)

Starring: Rémy Girard, Pierre Curzi, Dominique Michel

The Pitch: Four Montreal intellectuals gather at a country retreat preparing a meal for a dinner party, while their wives gather at a health club - all of them talking about their sex lives, then coming together for the party itself.

Theo Sez: At least one bon mot gets repeated in BARBARIAN INVASIONS - the bit about today's world being actually a less violent place than in previous eras, contrary to hype - and Arcand's general attitude to the Me Generation doesn't seem to have changed much in 17 years: it's when people start laying emphasis on personal happiness above all, goes the central tenet - e.g. demanding personal fulfilment in marriage instead of seeing it as a socio-economic contract, like they used to in the old days - that an Empire goes into decline. That censorious attitude coming out in the final act, with secrets revealed and a cosy world in tatters, is more or less the last straw, making a nonsense of the tone which till then has been almost too indulgent of these rather self-satisfied characters: Arcand shoots it in an overly cute way, with he-said-she-said cross-cutting between husbands and wives, monologues broken up self-consciously (half a sentence getting spoken in one place, the other half in another) and a couple of scenes shot like musical numbers, with dialogue turning into a kind of recitative (our heroes even dance en masse at one point). It's the BIG CHILL style (and more), except everyone in that film was uncertain about the way their life was going whereas everyone in this one is caught up in happy hedonism - unsurprisingly for a film that begins with the statement that History is basically immoral, or more properly amoral ("It's about the numbers"); Arcand's position seems to be that taking the long view - e.g. being an academic - leads inexorably to the loss of idealism as only sensual pleasures remain solid and inarguable (only the body doesn't deceive, as Rémy puts it), leading to an emphasis on pleasure and moral decline - only he prefers to save it as a late twist, working overtime to make his heroes cuddly and complacent, as well as witty in the cultured Rohmer way (though Rohmer would never play along with them like that). Smug and thought-provoking in about equal measure, hence the rating. Note to younger readers: there was once a world before AIDS and political correctness (not that I remember it; I was just a kid myself in '86) when people could be free and easy about sex, and talk about Negroes being the best lovers and the beautiful curves on the arse of a 12-year-old boy without attracting the attention of the thought police. Must've been fun...