loading loading...

The Decline Of The American Empire Details

1986 Certificate 18
  • Rated:
  • 60
  • from 1614 members

Acclaimed Canadian director Denys Arcand's witty comedy focuses on the marriages and affairs of eight intellectual friends. The group has plans to gather at a secluded house for dinner. While the four men prepare the food and reflect on their promiscuity, the four women discuss their own affairs at a nearby gym. At the dinner .. Read more

Starring Dominique Michel, Louise Portal, Dorothee Berryman, Pierre Curzi
Director Denys Arcand
Genres Comedy, World Cinema

Sign up The Decline Of The American Empire DVD

Buy From: £6.93

loading loading...

The Decline Of The American Empire cover art

The Decline Of The American Empire

Acclaimed Canadian director Denys Arcand's witty comedy focuses on the marriages and affairs of eight intellectual friends. The group has plans to gather at a secluded house for dinner. While the four men prepare the food and reflect on their promiscuity, the four women discuss their own affairs at a nearby gym. At the dinner table, conflicts soon arise when Dominique, who teaches history at the local university, reveals that she herself has had affairs with two of the men there--one of whom is married to Louise, also present. The entire evening turns into a disaster, with everyone at each other's throats. This Oscar-nominated Canadian film explores the subjects of marriage, infidelity and sex when a group of friendly intellectuals get together for a weekend in the country.

Starring Dominique Michel, Louise Portal, Dorothee Berryman, Pierre Curzi
Director Denys Arcand
Studio ARTIFICIAL EYE
Run time DVD: 1 hr 37 mins
Certificate Certificate 18
Genres Comedy, World Cinema
Language DVD: French
Subtitles DVD: English
Released DVD: 23 Feb 2004
Production year: 1986
Format DVD

  • Critics' reviews (5) of The Decline Of The American Empire

    View all
  • 4 stars out of 5

    Nominated for a best foreign film Oscar, this sophisticated satire on the sexual mores of a group of ageing intellectuals is superbly structured and paced by the Québecois director, Denys Arcand. Having shown us the quartet of history tutors and their four female friends separately expressing their forthright views on physical pleasure, he then brings them together for a dinner party at which bourgeois discretion is soon forgotten amid the seepage of guilty secrets. As revealing as the bristling dialogue, flashbacks seamlessly punctuate the action to shade in personal and political details about the characters, whose very imperfection makes them fascinating.

    • Radio Times
    • Posted 29 Jan 2006

  • Four university history professors, three married and one gay, gather at a country retreat and prepare a large meal for... read more on Time Out

    • Time Out
    • Posted 04 Nov 2008

  • Most helpful member's review of The Decline Of The American Empire

    View all
  • 13 out of 15 people found this review helpful

    Rated - 4 stars

    Great ensemble piece

    One of these films which leaves you feeling that all French speaking people, no matter what they look like, are sexier, smarter and far more intellectual than you are. The acting and dialogue are superb. A worthy predecessor to The Barbarian Invasions which won an Oscar this year.

      • Andrew from Scotland
      • Posted 07 May 2004 09:07

  • Most recent members' review of The Decline Of The American Empire

    View all
  • 11 out of 13 people found this review helpful

    Rated - 1 star

    Middle-aged sleaze

    This film by Denys Arcand has a modern sequel, The Barbarian Invasions (2003), so it was interesting to look back at this 1986 original. The cast of both films is more or less the same. In "Decline" the eight principals, four men and four women, are in their early middle-age, and interested in sex to the exclusion of almost everything else. The film is endlessly, obsessively concerned with physical sex, but it is nearly all chatter.

    The men (preparing for a dinner party) brag unappealing to each other about past conquests, and complain about the superficiality and duplicity of women. In a parallel storyline the women (working out in a gym) smirk about the gullibility and unreliability of men. It doesn't take long to realise that each group is talking about the others.

    Although the script is actually quite sharp, and contains several good observations, the over-emphatic acting and the self-consciously "frank" approach to the subject give this a repellent quality. The men seem sleazy and fickle, the women calculating and derisive.

    From time to time the film looks like "On Golden Pond", but there all resemblance ends.

      • Scribbler from East Sussex
      • Posted 21 Jun 2004 22:33

  • More like this

    View all
    Showing 1 to 4 of 20

    loading

Find cinemas


Rating breakdown

1,614 Member ratings
  • 100
104
  • 90
108
  • 80
215
  • 70
234
  • 60
274
  • 50
192
  • 40
171
  • 30
128
  • 20
119
  • 10
69

Related user collection

Buy from the LOVEFiLM shop

    • The Decline Of The American Empire

    • The Decline Of The American Empire
    • DVD: £6.93
      Free Delivery
    • RRP £19.79 (you save: 65%)
      • Acclaimed Canadian director Denys Arcand's witty comedy focuses on the marriages and affairs of eight intellectual friends. The group has plans to gather at a secluded house for dinner. While the ...