Incendies (2010)
R - 139 min - Drama, Mystery, War - 12 January 2011
Big Blue Sky Rating : 8.1/10
Director : Denis Villeneuve
Writers : Valérie Beaugrand-Champagne, Wajdi Mouawad
Stars : Lubna Azabal, Mélissa Désormeaux-Poulin, Maxim Gaudette, Mustafa Kamel
A mother's last wishes send twins Jeanne and Simon on a journey to the Middle East in search of their tangled roots. Adapted from Wajdi Mouawad's acclaimed play, Incendies tells the powerful and moving tale of two young adults' voyage to the core of deep-rooted hatred, never-ending wars and enduring love.
Fantastic! Villeneuve's best film yet
This film is extraordinary on just about every level. The script is terrific, the actors are perfect, the direction and cinematography are all you could hope for. I recommend it without hesitation.
Anyone who has seen any of Villeneuve's previous work--or Andre Turpin's Zigrail--knows that these filmmakers have bodies of work that are almost without peer in contemporary cinema world-wide and are unparallelled in the history of Canadian cinema (until seeing Incendies, Maelstrom was my favourite Canadian film). Incendies does not betray that "legacy". You should absolutely see it.
In a film as stunning as this one it's odd to single out one aspect, but I must say that Lubna Azabal's performance is among the best I've ever seen. Though I've watched a few films that she's been in in the past, she never really stood out for me. She is devastatingly good in this picture.
I do hope that this film gets submitted to the AMPAS for Oscar selection as it is definitely the best film I've seen this year and a shoe-in for the foreign picture Oscar.
My only complaint about the film was the use of music by Radiohead, which took me out of the film each time it played. The rest of the music cues were spot-on and quite excellent, but Thom Yorke's voice belonged nowhere near this film.
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