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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

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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

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  • 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

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  • 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

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  • 8 out of 12 people found this review helpful

    Rated - 5 stars

    Insightful film

    A very insightful film without a beginning and lacking an end. Breaks the mould that Hollywood has created that makes people expect a clear beginning an end to the film.

    The film concentrates around eight intellectual university professors, four men, one sex crazed that has cheated on his wife hundred times over, one gay who describes his desire to cruise like no other description heard ever before, one PhD student who is somewhat striving to be like his peers but seems to have a hard time doing so after their none stop rankings about sex and one typically looking academic who strives to find love, and does so in a young geisha.

    The group of four women is equally intriguing comprising of the slut's wife who is madly in love with her husband but has no idea about his exploits, one single woman who does not seem to find her feet properly when it comes to relationships, the geisha who we do not find too much about and the last woman, a sado masochist who loves power and analysing it.

    These people's function at the university is energetically intertwined in the film with their sex and love lives and the film brings out some fruitful discussions and attempts to give an intellectual approach to the most amilastic of our desires.

    Amazing dialogue with some very convincing actors makes this film an amazing film that just can not come out of Hollywood.

      • magic from Surrey
      • Posted 26 Jun 2004 13:48

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      • 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 ...