Quebec director Denys Arcand signs a “Testament” full of life, in keeping with the times

Denys Arcand always takes a sharp look at the contemporary world, in an incisive and funny new film.

Five years without Denys Arcand, we would have missed him a little. His return this Wednesday, November 22 with Will delights, in a film whose title is a trap, a trap for the viewer. The vitality, vivacity and acuity of his character are worth their weight in peanuts. From The Decline of the American Empirethe Quebec director puts the West in a box with fine and priceless sagacity.

Last of the Mohicans

Single, 70-year-old former archivist in a retirement home, Jean-Michel sees his illusions fade a little every day. Until the day when the director of the establishment is taken to task because of the presence in the hall of a fresco deemed offensive towards Native Americans. Cultivated, the retiree initially takes a cynical look at the society around him, then becomes aware of the values ​​he can bring to others to resolve this event which is taking a national turn.

Denys Arcand finds Rémy Girard as an alter ego with a distanced view of what he observes. He embodies one last of the Mohicans of a culture which is crumbling, like the transition from oral to written, today from written to digital. “Film testament” is a ready-made formula, and Arcand reaches out to us to make us fall into it. It would be a bad idea to know him, master of the script and dialogues, behind the camera, Arcand is undoubtedly the first to not know whether he will make a film again or not. As in song, goodbyes are eternal.

Nostalgic and swing

Funny, Will is nevertheless haunted by death, but like a dance of death. The film is like a magic trick, a shaman’s trick, a Franco-Canadian merry-go-round, unique and universal. Set in our post-pandemic world, Will does not so much put into perspective the colonial conflict contained in the polemical fresco of the film, as the way in which it is perceived. Behind her, Arcand asks the question of a Covid marker of the end of civilization. Politics and the media get involved to participate in a hodgepodge orchestrated by the gaze of a circumspect Denys Arcand who renews himself.

To find out if Denys Arcand will deliver another film to us afterwards Will, undoubtedly, he wants it. And if the little pigs don’t eat it, we’ll find it again, before the five years that separate us from his previous film. His youngest is great, well beyond a feel good movie. With his neurons awake, Denys Arcand is like an alarm clock, never sad, nostalgic and swinging, always upbeat.

The sheet

Gender : Drama
Director: Denys Arcand
Actors: Rémy Girard, Sophie Lorain, Marie-Mai, Guylaine Tremblay, Caroline Neron
Country : Canada
Duration : 1h55
Exit : November 22, 2023
Distributer : Day2party

Synopsis: In an era of evolving identity, Jean-Michel, a 70-year-old single man, has lost all his bearings in this society and seems to no longer have much to expect from life. But in the retirement home where he lives, Suzanne, the director, is attacked by young demonstrators who are demanding the destruction of a fresco that is offensive to them. As he ironically observes this post-pandemic era where everything seems to be going adrift, Jean-Michel takes control of his life… and that of others.