The Decline of the American Empire
The Decline of the American Empire
| 19 June 1986 (USA)
The Decline of the American Empire Trailers

Four very different Montreal university teachers gather at a rambling country house to prepare a dinner. Remy (married), Claude (a homosexual), Pierre (involved with a girlfriend) and Alain (a bachelor) discuss sex, the female body and their affairs with them. Meanwhile, their four female guests, Louise (Remy's wife of 15 years), Dominique (a spinster), Diane (a divorcée) and Danielle (Pierre's girlfriend) are spending the time at a downtown health gym. They also discuss sex, the female body and, naturally, men. Later in the evening, they finally meet at the country house and have dinner. A ninth guest, named Mario, who used to know Diane, drops in on the group for some talk and has a surprise of his own.

Similar Movies to The Decline of the American Empire
Reviews
Nonureva

Really Surprised!

... View More
Maidexpl

Entertaining from beginning to end, it maintains the spirit of the franchise while establishing it's own seal with a fun cast

... View More
Kamila Bell

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

... View More
Abegail Noëlle

While it is a pity that the story wasn't told with more visual finesse, this is trivial compared to our real-world problems. It takes a good movie to put that into perspective.

... View More
Michael Neumann

This French Canadian talkfest will be a feast for intellectuals, but a test of endurance for anyone else, showing a group of University professors and their spouses discussing, explicitly and at great length, their relationships and sex lives, at first separately and later together over dinner. The men brag, the women ridicule, and there isn't a sympathetic character in the bunch. It's certainly a handsome film, but obviously not for all tastes; except for a single apt metaphor equating men with insects and women with reptiles the whole charade is too cold and uninvolving. All the highbrow philosophical cud chewing can't disguise the fact that writer director Denys Arcand is simply peddling the same, standard ammunition that has always fueled the battle between the sexes.

... View More
Polaris_DiB

History and experience over the past couple of decades has shown us that intellectuals talking about sex is about the unsexiest and unintellectual thing anyone can do, but this wasn't quite as obvious back in 1986. Basically, the idea in this film is that these characters insatiable drive to find comfort, security, and pleasure in sexual acts is actually the unhealthy motive that makes them so unbearable to themselves--which they hide from themselves with more sex. This drive is linked to "the decline of the American Empire", as expressed in an early interview within the movie.So the idea is that relatively detestable people talk about sex, and that that talk is supposed to reveal how detestable they are as people. Arcand at least keeps giving it drive and momentum by doing interesting things with the camera such as isolating most of the characters in single frames, revealing their ultimate loneliness, and cutting rapidly between them, showing how they are more at war with each other than they are at agreement. And to give Arcand credit, this is pretty much what intellectual life is, a constant struggle with other intellectuals to stand out, even when everyone knows that standing out means standing alone.But yeah, the characters and action are unsexy and kind of pathetic. I think this film is much more an aspect of its time than it is something meant to last, which makes it kind of dated. It's also the exact type of mental buffing in dialog and references to people like Susan Sontag that makes art-house films so unpopular around the populist entertainment moviegoers. In all, I'll take it anyway--it has its place basically among the exact type of people the characters are--it's just that it's not really interesting or important to anyone who isn't those characters.--PolarisDiB

... View More
zolaaar

The title sounds like as if it comes from Ancient Rome, and in a very galvanized way, this witty-sarcastic tragicomedy from Canada has something to do with it: The easier is life, the looser are the dos. And that is why during a country house weekend stay all the participating intellectual bourgeois charmers, who usually teach history and write books, waffle about sex, sex and sex, while they kick at the fitness center (the women) or prepare a fish plate in the kitchen (the men).With perfidious lust Denys Arcand contra-dots male and female sex fantasies. When you listen to the gent club between stove and sink, your ears seem to fall off. When you hear the rants of the lady squad between sauna and bodybuilding, the ears of the gents ought to fall off. However, after the gender cliques unite at the table for dinner, a more complicated inner life becomes visible beneath all these ludicrous orgasm rants from before. Friends came together here who are kind to, who lie to, who hurt each other. Bitterness and resignation, but also safety and tolerance remain in the autumn dawn. And after all, it's a film of a verbally disarming sexual humour, adorably acted and with gentle ironies of absurd experiences of life: The human being is multifaceted. Simple are only theories.

... View More
dlipman

Having lived and taught at a francophone public university in Montreal in the early 1970's, I found this movie (just recently available through Netflix) accurately reflecting the preoccupation with sexual liberation, sexual experimentation and gender equality among so many Quebecois. Starting in the 60's, and definitely continuing into the 70's, Quebecois totally overthrew centuries of social control exercised by a particularly conservative Catholic church. Except for the 17th century language with its unique pronunciation, and maybe "cabane-a-sucre" (maple syrup) parties in late winter, countless traditions and social hierarchies apparently were scrapped. I believe sexual exploration and questioning of authority went far deeper than in the US, at least among the many urban middle and working class young people I met in that period. Yes, "Decline ..." is wordy, but words have their own eroticism, and mind-body integration is a big part of the sexual liberation the characters were facing, for better or worse. If you like this movie don't miss the sequel, The Barbarian Invasions, which reexamines these characters from a (hopefully) more mature perspective, skillfully weaves death and desire, and is just a great movie.

... View More