Director infuses himself
into unlikely reunion storyDenys Arcand says that there's
a bit of him in each character
To learn the personal side of French-Canadian film director Denys Arcand, you need to see his films.
"There's a little bit of me in every character, male and female," Arcand said in a telephone interview from Los Angeles before his film "The Barbarian Invasions" won the Oscar last week for best foreign film.
"It's one reason you make films ... to expose yourself."
His latest film -- which first screened locally last fall during the Hawaii International Film Festival -- involves the last days of Remy, a character introduced to audiences in 1986 in Arcand's "The Decline of the American Empire," an intimate portrait of eight friends. All the stars reprise their roles in this latest film.
"I knew, even as I was writing 'Decline,' that these characters deserved a second movie. They were so vital," says Arcand, 62. "I didn't start out looking to do a reunion story."
Instead, he wanted to make a film about a man coming to terms with death and his son, but each script was full of despair -- dark and hopeless stuff he didn't care about.
"But I don't entirely give up on a project," Arcand said. "I put the scripts on the shelf and do something else. I look at it from time to time but do another film. If it's really serious and you are meant to do that film, it always comes back."
He was right. Two years ago, Arcand came up with the idea to revisit the characters in a sort of foreign "Big Chill" way. "It's a film about a serious, tragic subject but at same time has this levity and hopefulness that I was looking for, and with these actors, I was able to pull it off."
But why bring the irascible Remy back only to have him die?
"I asked myself who would be the most plausible to die," Arcand said. "It had to be Remy because, in part, life is not just. Often the ones who perish first are the ones who love life the most. ... It's ironic and unjust, but that's why Remy had to go."
Remy has been a bad husband, poor father and "probably a mediocre teacher," Arcand says. He is an academic whose sexual exploits are known to all his friends and family. All of them love to hate Remy. "Everything is wrong about this guy. But in the end, even if you're like that, you want to be forgiven even by people you have not been very nice to."
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Denys Arcand's "Barbarian Invasions" won an Oscar Feb. 29 for best foreign film.
There are similarities between Arcand and Remy. "I've had three women in my life," he says. "I'm 62. I lived with one woman until I was 40, another until I was 50, and now another. I still see the first two."
A poignant scene between Remy and his financier son, Sebastien, has Remy asking the man, "What exactly do you do with your life?"
"It's a question I always wanted my father to ask me, but he never did," Arcand said. "My dad never knew what a director was or exactly what a filmmaker did."
In another scene, Remy tells his university class that for health reasons he is unable to continue teaching. The students look at him blankly.
"I have been flat broke before and taught twice, and it was very, very difficult," Arcand says. "You'd make a reference to a book or something in literature, and the students have never read it.
"Sometimes you feel that these kids are totally indifferent to you. They weren't interested at all in his being sick as they were in how would it affect the examination schedule."
Another middle-age male character is married to a young woman with whom he has just had twins. At 55, Arcand adopted a young girl with his longtime lover, Denise Robert. "The character was me, saying I also know what it's like to buy diapers."
When the film was in limited release last year, Arcand visited a few major U.S. cities. For this re-release, he visited smaller cities. "I have been very surprised and quite happy by audiences' knowledge of what I've done and their interest in foreign films. I knew this audience existed somewhere," he says. "It's wonderful that the English-speaking world is embracing these people. It means that in our hearts, where it counts, we speak the same language."
Arcand says the actors were also thrilled to re-enact their characters some 17 years later. "The wonderful thing about this film is that the characters have aged with the actors."
The film shows what seems to be a decidedly French attitude toward marriage and mistresses. Remy is visited in the hospital by former mistresses and his wife, all of whom get along wonderfully.
"I used to say this is a cultural difference," Arcand says. "If you are French or Italian, you assume your husband will end up with mistresses, or ... he'll go to a brothel, because it's understood one man can't be satisfied sexually by only one woman."
Then Arcand spoke with an American woman who offered another reason for the women's mutual friendliness.
"She said when her husband died, his two ex-wives showed up, and she was glad to see them," he said. "The husband was dying, and when someone is dying, there are a lot of things that disappear, like jealousy.
"What's the point -- because there is no tomorrow. You might as well kiss the women you love because it's real and without consequences."
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