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COPYRIGHT 2003 All rights reserved. Reproduced by permission of The Condé Nast Publications Inc.
In "The Decline of the American Empire" (1986), the French-Canadian writer-director Denys Arcand created a companionable erotic fiction. A group of university intellectuals gathered at a lakeside house outside Montreal for a weekend of food, gossip, and sex. These academic folk--the women as well as the men--were ebullient talkers and boasters who loved to fool around. Remy (Remy Girard), a boisterous philanderer, was at the center of the group, surrounded by his wife, two of his former mistresses, and male friends both straight and gay. In Arcand's new film, "The Barbarian Invasions," Remy, now in his fifties, is dying of cancer in a Quebec hospital. His wife, fed up with his unending infidelities, threw him out years ago, but she still guards his morale, and she summons their son, Sebastien (Stephane Rousseau), from London to be with his father. The two men, it turns out, don't get along. As a boy, Sebastien never had much attention from Remy, and Remy is furious that Sebastien--a sleek, wealthy investment banker--turned his back on the intellectual passions that animated him and his friends. "If only he would read one book--just one!" Remy thunders from his bed, and when the two meet they can hardly talk to each other--they break into spitting rages in front of an aghast nun who goes around the hospital handing out holy wafers.
Rather mysteriously, Sebastien--out of loyalty to his mother, perhaps, or suppressed love for his noisy reprobate of...
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