The Barbarian Invasions

The Barbarian Invasions (Les invasions barbares, 2003) is a Canadian-French comedy-drama you can watch online on iFILM. Denys Arcand's follow-up to his 1986 film The Decline of the American Empire finds aging Montreal professor Rémy in a hospital bed, dying, while his estranged son Sébastien flies in from London with a banker's efficiency and a son's guilt.

Sébastien and Rémy have never agreed on anything. What money can do, though, is upgrade a hospital room, source morphine through unconventional channels, and track down every old friend his father ever argued with. One by one they arrive — ex-lovers, intellectual sparring partners, a woman played by Marie-Josée Croze whose Cannes Best Actress prize was richly earned. The film turns a deathbed gathering into something closer to a reunion than a farewell.

Arcand took home the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film and the Cannes Best Screenplay prize for a script that makes dying feel less heavy than it has any right to. The wit is dry and the affection is real. Stream The Barbarian Invasions (2003) online on iFILM.