The Decline of the American Empire (1986) is one of those films about which various viewers will never agree. It's an extremely talky film and the talk is witty, intellectual banter about sex and little else. If you like the idea of joining a dinner party made up mostly of a bunch of intelligent, over-sexed, middle-aged academics flaunting their verbal cleverness, you may very well find this film engrossing. For others, it will come across as a lot of puffed up verbal nonsense. This film is also less likely to appeal to those less than thirty years of age than those who are older. The film's director, Denys Arcand, is best known for his Academy Award winning film of 2003, The Barbarian Invasions. The 2003 film was something of a sequel to this one from 1986, dealing with some of the same cast of characters at a later phase in their lives.

Historical Background: Denys Arcand was born in 1941 in Deschambault, Quebec, Canada. He studied history at the University of Montreal and was active in leftist social and political causes. He made his first film, Seul ou avec des autres (1962), while still at the university. After making documentaries during the sixties, he turned to fictional features in the seventies. His first international success was the film under review here, The Decline of the American Empire (1986). It took the International Critics Prize at Cannes in 1986 and won the Best Foreign Film award from the New York Film Critics' Circle as well. Arcain also had noteworthy success with Jesus of Montreal (1989), which won the Jury Prize at Cannes. His best film to date, however, is The Barbarian Invasions (2003), which won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Film.

The Story: There's not much plot to this film. During the first half of the film, we meet the cast of characters fully segregated by gender. The women have gone to work out at a gym together while the men are in the kitchen preparing the evening's feast. Most of the characters are faculty or students of the History Department of a French Canadian university. The rest are spouses or lovers of the historians.

In this "liberated" society, we find Rémy, Pierre, Claude, and Alain in the kitchen at Rémy's lakeside home. Rémy (Rémy Girard) is the only married man among the four and he is married in name only, being an inveterate philanderer. As one of the gals later puts it, he's slept with every skirt in town. He's not especially handsome, but "he loves sex – and that's irresistible." He regales the others with stories of his affairs and freely admits to lying regularly to his wife. Pierre (Pierre Curzi) is equally self-absorbed but at least has the decency to realize that he is not cut out for marriage. He is currently dating a history student, Danielle, who he met at a massage parlor, where he purchased "the special." Claude (Yves Jacques) is gay and gets off on the excitement of cruising for men for one-night stands, despite the dangers that such a way of life poses for him. He wonders how the heterosexual men can stand being with women, what with all of those nasty heterosexually transmitted diseases, but is himself experiencing some kind of urinary tract infection and bleeding. He kneads the dough for the bread, shaping it into "the buns of a twelve year old boy," while assuring the others that he does not condone pedophilia. The men discuss how much they envy Claude not having to live with someone who menstruates monthly. Alain (Daniel Brière) is the youngest of the group, in his late twenties perhaps, and, despite his age, seems less hyper-sexed than his colleagues.

Meanwhile, in the gym, the gals are exercising, pumping iron, swimming, and taking a sauna together, all the while taking about their sexual escapades. There's Louise, Danielle, Dominique, and Diane. Louise (Dorothée Berryman) is married to Rémy. Her one sexual adventure since marriage was with her husband's knowledge. They had attended an orgiastic party together, thrown by one of the faculty of the university. It had begun with porn films and evolved into random pairings and trios, scattered throughout the house. Rémy had wandered off with two women and Louise had found herself with some man whom she didn't even know. He was taking his sweet time of it but apparently his wife had paired up with a premature ejaculator and had walked in on Louise and her husband, urging him to finish up. Diane (Louise Portal), who appears to be around thirty-five and single, has recently acquired a new lover, Mario (Gabriel Arcand). Mario is leather-jacketed, wears sunglasses and an earring, and drives a jeep. He's into rough sex and Diane is finding the spankings, bondage, and belt-whippings strangely to her liking. She's got welt marks on her back to corroborate her story. Dominique (Dominique Michel) is the eldest of the group and is divorced. She's starting to feel the pangs of loneliness as her opportunities for one-night stands are dwindling rapidly. She has previously had affairs with both Rémy and Pierre. She's recently published a book about how the hedonistic search for happiness in a society presages its ultimate decline. Danielle (Geneviève Rioux) is the youngster of the group and the current lover of Pierre. She's working her way through college by doling out manual and oral sex at the massage parlor. The four women discuss the best tactics for emasculating men and terminating erections and share some belly-laughs about the man with the miniscule penis that one of them had encountered.

Arcain brings the two groups together for the last third of the film and a more constained conversation over dinner. The frank discussion of sexual peccadilloes goes underground as the sexes coyly dance around one another and verbally spar over such issues as gender inequities at work, professional envies, family, aging, and the like. Tension rises because several of the characters have slept with more than one of the others and there's a palpable concern that truths might actually emerge. The closest thing to a crisis, in the film, is precipitated by Dominique revealing that she's slept with both Rémy and Pierre. That news comes as a shock to Louise, who has managed to stay blissfully unaware of her husband's many affairs.

Themes: Arcain tries hard to establish a deep theme for this film. Dominique, who has just published her first book, is interviewed, near the film's opening, about the book's main thesis, and offers the idea that the people of a society typically become preoccupied with gratifying appetites as that society begins to approach decay and collapse. Arcain offers that proposition, through Dominique, but then does precious little to develop the notion or to provide support for it.

There is also a half-hearted stab at a second theme, stated most directly by the character Mario, who has had his fill listening to the intellectuals wax on and on about sex. In exasperation, he opines as he makes his exit, "They talked about sex all afternoon as if they were getting ready for an orgy. Instead, the big deal is a fish pie." Some reviewers argue that talking about sex has become the substitute for genuine sex for these mainly over-the-hill characters. The film makes it evident, however, that these characters are both talking about sex incessantly and getting a lot of it as well, each in his or her own way. Rémy sleeps with nearly every eligible woman he encounters, Pierre is sleeping regularly with a young filly, and Claude is still cruising for male companions. Diane is experimenting with kinky sex. Only Dominique is struggling to get her share. If this is a reviewer's idea of how "thinking and talking about sex in our society" has "replaced sex," I can't imagine what kind of sex life that reviewer must be leading. While it's true that the film deals mainly with talking about sex, there is plenty of indication that the characters are also getting plenty of it. Arcane himself said of the characters of this film that "their bark was worse than their bite," but they're still nipping away heartily by the standards of most mongrels.

I'm pretty liberal in my views about sexuality, but here's a film that awakens my more conservative inclinations on the topic. I believe in sexual liberation to the extent that sex, in America, is governed by irrational pieties and taboos, but the characters in this film have also abandoned all standards of decency and truthfulness in their relationships with one another. They've undergone liberation from morality, not merely liberation from unreasonable sexual restraints. Though these folks are all highly intelligent, they are not wise. Too much of their intelligence is invested in maintaining self-delusions. Rémy is perhaps the worst of the group, having adopted lying and cheating as a way of life. "Lying is the basis of all love affairs," he offers. He's sacrificed the possibility of genuine, honest, love relationships for the shallow pleasures of sex. The sexual activities of these characters are as cheap as food from fast-food restaurants and no more nourishing. Sexual liberation in the eighties was especially cataclysmic in Quebec, as the culture there began to emerge from centuries of rigid repression by the dominant conservative Catholic influence. If we're to judge from this film, the result was a libertine excess of grotesque proportions. Nevertheless, it's a real stretch to link the excesses of a single decade (that became known as the "me-decade") to the death of a civilization. It will take something more substantial than the last hurrahs of a few aging intellectuals in Quebec to bring down American civilization.

Production Values: The dialog of this film is its strength, though it's also its weakness, to the extent that there's just too darn much of it. For much of the film, the activities of the characters (preparing food, working out at the gym) exist as if on a separate, parallel track from the dialog, which is all about sex. The images do, however, reinforce the idea that these are people mainly absorbed with the pleasures of life, be they in the form of sex, food, or wine. There are some very entertaining moments, such as when three of the men mockingly demonstrate the effort they've had to put in, over the years, pretending to enjoy dancing as part of the requisite seduction ritual. The discussion that ensues is not so much about the mechanics of sex as about the meanings, at least as such meanings exist for this rather cynical group of people.

Too much of the sexual dialog of this film sinks into platitudes and clichés. Claude exhibits too many stereotypically gay qualities, for example. Then there's the overused scene in which a tall, blond hooker turns out to be a transvestite. We're fed a lot of simplistic notions, like "disease is part of sex," but little in the way of genuine insights into the nature of human sexuality.

This is a good-looking film, with lots of bright colors. There's some gorgeous nature shots near the end in a scene about "dawn" that almost elevate the film from the mundane to the heady domain of genuine insights – except that it's too little and way too late. The performances are strong and quite entertaining. There's a lot of pressure on these performers to keep the film entertaining, what with so much endless babbling.

Bottom-Line: This is a good film, if you like intellectual banter and sexual repartee. It's not a great film because underneath that witty dialog, there's a lack of real substance, which is a killer for a film that is wordy. For those who crave action and disdain dialog, this film won't even make it to the level of mediocre. Thus, it's a hard film to grade. I'm going to reluctantly give it four stars, keeping in mind the viewers with a special taste for witty dialog, but will also warn others that it will likely be a two-star film for those not attuned to talky kinds of films. If you do like this film, you will definitely want to check out The Barbarian Invasions, which deals with many of the same characters and is a good deal better film. The Decline of the American Empire is in French with English subtitles and has a running time of 102 minutes.


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You might want to check out these other excellent films from Canada:

The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz
The Barbarian Invasions
Boys of St. Vincent
Exotica
The Fast Runner
Felicia's Journey
The Hanging Garden
The Sweet Hereafter

Recommended:
Yes

Viewing Format: DVD
Video Occasion: Better than Watching TV
Suitability For Children: Not suitable for Children of any age