Salon reviews Les Invasions Barbares. And they didn’t like it very much. Strangely, even though I enjoyed the movie, I agree with most of the comments made by Salon‘s reporter.
In the world of Quebecois filmmaker Denys Arcand, baby-boomer intellectuals are fascinating people, particularly to themselves. In fact, they’re their own best audience. (…) As I see it, though, the characters may be older, but they still haven’t grown up. (…) Spending money is how S�bastien shows love. That may be anathema to overeducated boomers like the ones in « The Barbarian Invasions, » people who claim to value ideas over money. The problem is that even though he’s emotionally remote, S�bastien seems more engaged with the world than they do. Even when R�my and his friends are discussing important historical or social events, they seem much more interested in the sound of their own voices than in the universe around them. The noise of their faux-intellectual yakking is deafening. Money talks, and sometimes, unfortunately, so do people.
The producers probably won’t enjoy this review, but they can at least be glad that the reporter got the accents right on the names.
