Film Description
| L'Âge des ténèbres (Days of Darkness) | ||
| Country: | Canada |  |
| Year: | 2007 | |
| Language: | French | |
| Time: | 104 minutes | |
| Rating: | 14A | |
| Principal Cast: | Marc Labrèche, Diane Kruger, Sylvie Léonard, Emma de Caunes, Didier Lucien | |
| Trailer: | View the trailer for this film | |
| SCREENING TIMES | |||
| Thursday, June 12, 2008 | 7:00 PM | Art Gallery of Windsor | Tickets $10 at |
The celebrated Denys Arcand returns with the triumphant conclusion to his acclaimed trilogy charting the mores of his social set. The first two films have become classics: the delightfully scatological Le Déclin de l'empire américain was followed by the heartrending Academy Award®-winning Les Invasions barbares, both of which mix humour with pathos to dissect the malaise of contemporary life. Not surprisingly, the final film is a wicked, whirlwind satire that gradually - magically - transforms into a work of poignant emotion. Arcand sets himself an enormous challenge in L'Âge des ténèbres - to move us from laughter to tears - and he pulls it off beautifully.
The film tells the story of a regular Joe - or rather a regular Jean-Marc (Marc Labrèche) - a family man and civil servant. Set in a recognizable but suitably Orwellian Montreal of the near future, the film shows our protagonist negotiating an elaborate Kafkaesque universe of political-correctness watchdog committees and useless government agencies. Jean-Marc's particular non-job is to patiently listen to citizens who come to his department for aid.
Fantasy provides his salve and his escape. Our bespectacled "man of no interest" conjures up an extravagant world of glitz and glamour; his opulently art-designed dreams are populated by harems of buxom babes who lavish romantic attention on him. This is in stark contrast to his real-life wife Sylvie (Sylvie Léonard), too busy with her real-estate wheeling and dealing to notice him, or his plugged-in adolescent daughters who remain equally indifferent. But a life of fantasy has its limits so when Jean-Marc finds himself juggling the demands of an ailing mother, a wife who high-tails it to Toronto for her career and a woman he picks up at a speed-dating event, he finds his life rapidly unravelling.
The enormously talented Québécois comic Labrèche creates an everyman in Jean-Marc with whom we can all identify. Arcand, meanwhile, brilliantly delineates a broken world of endless commutes and alienating technologies; this is what the everyday dramas of our twenty-first century "dark ages" look like. Escapist fantasies are one way out, but eventually everyone has to strip away their illusions to find the core of what matters. This is the lesson and power of the wonderful L'Âge des ténèbres.
