GrimPrecise I'll tell you why so serious

Hayden Kane There is, somehow, an interesting story here, as well as some good acting. There are also some good scenes

Tobias Burrows It's easily one of the freshest, sharpest and most enjoyable films of this year.

Roxie The thing I enjoyed most about the film is the fact that it doesn't shy away from being a super-sized-cliche;

cmccann-2 From The Lady Eve to Groundhog Day, the battle of the sexes is a recurrent theme in much cinema. In Denys Arcand's 1986 film The Decline of the American Empire, the showdown takes place over a fall weekend in Quebec cottage country among a group of academics. The film is a witty and sardonic look at sex and relationships in the modern age, and along with a handful of other French-Canadian films makes a solid argument for Quebec as the leading exponent of quality cinema in Canada.Decline... commences with parallel groups of four men and four women as they prepare dinner at the cottage and work out at the gymnasium, respectively. The characters are either professors in the history at the Universite De Montreal or their lovers, and their conversations are dominated by discussions of sexuality. Though initially the segregated groups of men and women have quite gendered conversations on the subject, their eventual coming together over dinner causes things to heat up and tensions to rise.A troupe of veteran Quebecois actors give indelible performances as the eight lead characters, special praise going to actor Remy Girard as the lovable scoundrel of the same first name. The cinematography of Arcand and DOP Guy Du Faux is also quite good, functional yet also achieving a subtle lyricism in parts. More than anything, however, the film should be noted for its script, Arcand possessing a preternatural skill for witty dialogue which makes the film enjoyable and engrossing throughout.In conclusion, The Decline of the American Empire is a smart comedy/drama which offers a funny glimpse into the lives of intellectuals and their bedroom matters. The film is a must-see for fans of Woody Allen and Whit Stillman, covering similar territory to these filmmakers while also offering a flavour that is uniquely French-Canadian. The Empire may be in decline, but so as films like Arcand's are being made we can at least enjoy good cinema in the meantime.8/10

Rockwell_Cronenberg You know those movies where a group of friends get together and the film consists of a series of conversations between them regarding their lives, loves and many interminglings? Well, take one of those and make the characters completely unlikeable, thin and not remotely interesting and you've got The Decline of the American Empire. An endless tirade of insignificant conversations between overly sexual imbeciles, occasionally relieved by an unnecessary flashback that is supposed to mix comedy and drama but succeeds in neither.There's a disturbing irony to it all because the film glazes over these dark, significant themes like infidelity but Arcand's approach is so flat and vanilla that none of it gets explored with even the slightest bit of depth or intelligence. I have no idea how these this film received such high praise from critics foreign and domestic. You can't live in a world where a true auteur such as Arnaud Desplechin is crafting ensemble character dramas that are so vivid and fascinating, and then look at this garbage and think it's anything worth watching.

Michael Terceiro I really did not like this movie. It was pretentious and quite tedious. I don't think I liked one single character in the entire movie. The story involves a bunch of academics who hand around a holiday house (the men) and gym (the women) talking about sex. The two groups end up coming together at the holiday house and talking more about sex. As you can imagine nobody has anything particularly uplifting to say about the topic of sex, focusing more on serial infidelity.I guess one could argue that the whole point of the movie was to ridicule the main characters to demonstrate the decline of the American empire, but I don't think the director achieved that.Also watching a movie like this with subtitles is hard work because the movie is very wordy. I found it hard to keep up with the constant rush of words at the bottom of the screen.

JackBenjamin Edward Gibbon would be proud.Arcand crafts a wonderful narrative here with four main elements: The men talking, the women talking, men and women together, and flashbacks. The men are philanderers, obsessed with sex, cooking a decadent meal, teaching the youth their unholy ways. The women are just as obsessed but with nominally different sensibilities. Notice how they're working out the whole time, concerned with body, sustaining life, attracting men.When they come together of course decorum is king, and only through flashbacks do we get punctuations of truth.This is a very good movie and a pleasure to watch. Arcand manages to write with a playwright's ear and a film director's brain. But, without Barbarian Invasions it really is an incomplete experience.