The Decline of the American Empire (1986)

One of the best films i have seen

I cannot think of one single thing that I would change about this film. The acting is incomparable, the directing deft, and the writing poignantly brilliant.

I have absolutely never seen anything like this movie before. You have to see this movie.

It's simply great fun, a winsome film and an occasionally over-the-top luxury fantasy that never flags.

Serving as a prequel 17 years earlier of his Oscar-winning picture THE BARBARIAN INVASIONS (2003), Denys Arcand's Oscar-nominated THE DECLINE OF THE American EMPIRE is a pungent satire about the clashing encounter of the cerebral front and visceral impact pursuant to sex, marriage, betrayal and gender politics.Set in Montreal, the ensemble including four very different men (three are university professors), Pierre (Curzi), a middle-aged man dating a young girl, Rémy (Girand), a married man for 15 years, Claude (Jacques), a single gay professor, and a young bachelor Alain (Brière), while they are preparing a dinner for the evening, their four female guests, are dripping with sweat in the uptown gym, they are, Louise (Berryman), Rémy's wife, Dominique (Michel), a spinster, Diane (Portal), a divorcée and Danielle (Rioux), Pierre's current girlfriend, a college student and moonlights as a masseuse. Plus, a non-middle class intruder is Mario (Arcand), a curt and tough kind, who only intends to engage in some rough shafting with Diane.It takes quite some time for first-time viewers to get acquainted with these characters and their relationships. The first half of the film is constituted and divided by men's talk and women's talk, both about their various sex lives, buoyed up by a snippy editing (timely injecting flashback segments to visualize their recount), these two paralleled happenings are conflated together to enlighten how different views from men and women can be, especially on the same subject matter, the conversations are all perky and self-boosting, from excesses like adultery, S&M to swapping partners in an orgy, from speech of "gratification becomes the parameter of existence" to the titular "the decline of American empire" argument (an unconvincing point-of-view brewed in the ivory tower), as haughty and snobbish as they appear, there are moments of truth within.When the two parties finally meet, the dinner table pleasantry turns into self-revealing heart- searching, then ends up with Dominique's spur-of-the-moment remark which causes strains upon Rémy and Louise's marriage. An acerbic mockery of talk the talk, but not walk the talk among these self-reliant middle class intellectuals, paralyzed by their verbal elaborations about their feelings and needs, while in truth, their lives are overwhelming benumbing.Integrated an organic ensemble (Arcand, Rioux, Jacques and Michel are standouts in my pick) with a Haendel-themed spiritually enhancing soundtrack, and cinematographer Guy Dufaux's majestic static shots (notably the opening credit, and the sublime natural scenes), THE DECLINE OF THE American EMPIRE is eloquent in its tangy acuteness for sardonic-ism, but most of its contents are either blasé or under-developed, there is something missing in the aftertaste, maybe it is gratification.

This Québécois, i.e. Canadian made French language film, is definitely not one I would have heard or perhaps of cared before I saw its inclusion in the book 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die, I hoped I would agree with this and other critical opinions. Basically four academic intellectual friends, four men and four women, all from the Department of History at the Université de Montréal, are gathering for a dinner at a rambling and secluded country house. The men are married Rémy (Rémy Girard), homosexual Claude (Yves Jacques), involved with a girlfriend Pierre (Pierre Curzi) and bachelor Alain (Daniel Brière) who spend time discussing political and professional topics, but mostly women, the female body and sex. The women are Rémy wife of 15 years Louise (Dorothée Berryman), spinster Dominique St. Arnaud (Dominique Michel), divorcée Diane Leonard (Louise Portal) and Pierre's girlfriend Danielle (Geneviève Rioux) are spending time in the gym downtown also discussing politics and professional stuff, and also their sexual affairs and opinions of men. It is after the dinner is prepared and they all gather at the table that tensions arise, when it turns out one of the women may have had an affair with two of the men, one being married, and they are also joined by ninth guest Mario (Gabriel Arcand) who only adds more stress to the situation. The acting is all fine, and the story is relatively simple, it is the mix of flashbacks and the dialogue full of sexual exploits and experiences that is most interesting to watch, it also adds to the concept of character imperfections creating complications, it is a watchable comedy drama. It was nominated the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film. Very good!

Sex is a most noteworthy aspect of existence. It is perhaps the most interesting activity there is between birth and death. LE DECLIN DE L'EMPIRE AMERICAIN studies human sexuality in a dry and boring manner. Actually, worse than being simply boring, seeing nude 40-year-olds is, well, unpleasant.I guess there is some shock value in having adults as old as our parents talk about sex, but after twenty minutes, this stops being interesting. Perhaps if the characters were all 20 years younger, the film would be more visually captivating.LE DECLIN DE L'EMPIRE AMERICAIN is not worth the time.

recently saw 'les invasions barbares' by this film's director denys arcand, the papa of the cinema-du-papa of french canada. it's a film centered on 'le declin's' Remy character, a pain-in-the-ass married, chauvinist, leftist academic, his strained relationship with his grown son, and his world-weary, academic friends who come to his side before his impending death. i thought it was rather interesting and i quite liked it. an intelligent exploration of the cost of the way we live our lives--politically, morally, and socially. then, i rented 'jesus de montreal,' a scathing intellectual critique of the commerciallization of the arts in canada. i liked that one too. then, i watched 'le declin de l'empire americain,' which is the prequel to 'les invasions.' i realized how much arcand has developed in some ways in between these two films, his vision has matured. however, i realize that 'le declin' smacks of the sort of thing that hovers on the edges of his other two better films, sexism, of course, but more insidiously, a nonchalant racism that is never addressed as a political issue despite the fact that everything else is. it's the kind of film that makes makes the contempt i hold for white liberal intellectuals that much wider and deeper and alienates me from their white smugness. for example, in both 'les invasions' and 'le declin,' there is this particularly insidious aside of the main character's apparent racist fascination with 'les femmes asiatiques.' in two identical shots of an asian woman's face, holding the prototypical fetishized gaze of the male speaker, he goes on about his desire for her. it's so bloody demeaning and why the hell does Remy/Arcand repeat himself like this in these two films? is it to show the level of this character's sexual appetite by throwing in the classical emblem of the other, an asian woman? how incredibly oversexed he is to express his particular fetish for 'les vietnamiennes' or 'les chinoises?' it's freaking sick. and it's even more sick because it's completely apolitical in a film that politicizes everything else, including white women's sexual attitudes. the subaltern cannot speak. in another scene, this really embittered, nightmarish white woman academic talks about her sexual adventures in martinique where she has a three-way with a couple of black martiniquains. she says that it was fine except when they 'opened their mouths.' then she mimics their pathetic patois in a contemptuous, racist tone. this is completely messed up. i guess it's a critique of this character, but still, again, here is the apolitical treatment of race in a liberal, political film. why? it adds nothing to the film and is an insult to people of color who watch this. or maybe denys arcand doesn't think people of color would go see his films?i have many reservations about denys arcand. he may be canada's 'best filmmaker' but he's kind of a scourge of racist, white, international, feelgood art cinema, a mon avis...