Friday, June 10, 2011
Sabrik Hakeem
Remy Girard, Melissa Desormeaux-Poulin and Maxim Gaudette are thrown into perplexing situations in "Incendies."
The cycle of violence and cruel coincidence in "Incendies" is, as the title telegraphs, scorching. It takes the story in a direction that is dramatically shocking and abhorrent.
That is the point -- along with the notions that love and hate can coexist and peace sometimes comes only after death -- in this adaptation of the play "Scorched" by Wajdi Mouawad. Born in Lebanon in 1968, he and his family fled to France to escape civil war and he moved to Montreal in 1983.
- Starring: Lubna Azabal, Melissa Desormeaux-Poulin, Maxim Gaudette, Remy Girard.
- Rating: R for some strong violence and language.
After mood-setting images of boys being transformed into child soldiers, the story opens at a Canadian notary's office where Jeanne (Melissa Desormeaux-Poulin) and her twin brother, Simon Marwan (Maxim Gaudette) are about to hear their mother's will and last wishes.
"Bury me with no casket, no prayers, naked, face down, away from the world," her instructions read. No gravestone and no engraving of her name anywhere, in fact. "No epitaph for those who don't keep their promises," Nawal Marwan insisted before her death at age 60.
If that isn't disturbing enough, the notary (Remy Girard) hands Jeanne and Simon letters for their father and brother. They are perplexed since they were told their father died "during the war in Daresh," and they have no brother.
If they carry out their mother's final requests, they will be given another missive. "The silence will be broken, a promise kept, and you can place a stone on my grave and on it engrave my name in the sun."
Simon is infuriated by these final wishes while mathematician Jeanne knows that unless she solves this inscrutable puzzle, her mind will never be at peace. She heads overseas to the Middle East where she enters a maze that promises no exit.
The movie introduces Nawal Marwan as a young woman accused of staining the family's honor and watching her boyfriend be shot to death. When Nawal tells her hysterical grandmother that she is pregnant, the older woman arranges for the girl to hand over her baby and then go to stay with an uncle in town.
The movie cuts back and forth between present and past and skips through time as Nawal grows into a militant caught among the fighting factions of her country and yet never relinquishing hope that she may someday find her first-born child.
Director and screenwriter Denis Villeneuve ("Maelstrom") does not shrink from the ravages of war, including torture, although he sometimes conveys these horrors through sounds -- shrieks of pain or songs meant to signal defiance and drown out the screams of others.
Neither the play nor the movie names the Middle Eastern country where the story is set (it was filmed in Quebec and Jordan and the playwright's Lebanese roots are obvious) which is somewhat maddening.
These fictitiously named locations sound like real ones, leaving me with the sensation that I had wandered across a border without a map or cheat sheet for the conflicts among Muslims, Christians, right-wingers and an explosion of others.
"Paradise Now" actress Lubna Azabal, the fiery heart of the movie, invests Nawal with determination, courage and a motherly instinct that manifests itself in ways expected and unexpected. Her story nevertheless comes to a tragic realization that renders her (and possibly us) almost mute at the scope of her misery.
"Incendies," which lost the Oscar for best foreign language film to Denmark's "In a Better World," is one of those movies you may be glad you saw -- but never need or want to watch again.
Opens today at the Regent Square Theater. In French and Arabic with English subtitles.
Movie editor Barbara Vancheri: bvancheri@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1632. Read her Mad About the Movies blog at www.post-gazette.com/movies.First published on June 10, 2011 at 12:00 am
Source: http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/11161/1152590-120.stm?cmpid=movievideo.xml
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