Canada's "Barbarian Invasions" : a sad, bittersweet tribute to life

0 Comments | AFP, February, 2004

HOLLYWOOD (AFP) — Canada's "The Barbarian Invasions," crowned the best foreign language film with an Oscar, is a bittersweet tale of a family battling to connect with its dying but combative patriarch.

In the final days of his life, Remy, a high-spirited Socialist history professor, and his family are forced to face his impending death from cancer, and to reexamine the gulf that had grown between them through years of bitterness.

Remy's estranged stock-broker son, living a capitalist's high life in London, gathers together his father's oldest comrades, including family, friends and even former mistresses for some rowdy banter as he sees out his days.

"I'm trying to describe the kind of death I'd like to have," Arcand told New York Magazine. "I'd go someplace...