Incendies
Director: Denis Villeneuve
Year Released: 2010
Rating: 2.0
Following the death of their mother, her twins (Mélissa Désormeaux-Poulin and Maxim Gaudette) are given the task of hand-delivering letters to their long-lost brother and father, who are still (apparently) living in the Middle East. The twist in the last third of the movie is what seems to have people think this is (far) better than it actually is: though the revelation is admittedly a stunner (if ... illogical), the preceding two-thirds of the movie lack emotional resonance: the characters are shells of people, and the key figure, Nawal (Lubna Azabal) is just an object to be battered around by men (when Villeneuve shows a burning bus of people and a child executed, it's clearly trying hard to make you feel something). By turning a seemingly complicated conflict in a not-specified location (it's Christians versus Muslims) into sheer vagueness, it almost seems to trivialize the (incredibly complex) political aspects.
