Incendies

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A tough one to review, this.Incendies is all about the BIG reveal at the climax so this review is forced to be light on details for spoiler reasons. Nominated for Best Foreign Film, Incendies is a powerful and haunting experience that won't leave the memory for some time. That ending, however, will divide opinion.

'I admit it's unusual,' says notary Jean Lebel (Girard) to twins Jeanne (Désomreaux-Poulin) and Simon (Gaudette) as he relays their mother's instructions for her funeral; mother Nawal (Azabal) has bizarre notions for her burial that coincide with her odd life. He passes two envelopes across the table: they are to be delivered to the twins' brother and father respectively, which is news to the twins as they never knew they had a brother and thought their father was long dead. Simon wants nothing to do with it but Jeanne takes off for the Middle East to respect her mother's final wishes. What she finds changes her life forever…

Apologies for the slight synopsis but to say anymore would do Incendies a terrible injustice. In a style that sometimes mimics music videos (slow motion scenes set to music, the music here supplied by Radiohead), Incendies is split up into chapters with the story handed back and forth - flashbacks to Nawal's story and Jeanne's attempt to uncover the truth about her mother. Nawal's story overshadows her daughter's: Nawal's is a story of big themes - love, rape, justice,murder and war. It's the stuff of epics, the kind of story David Lean would love to direct if he was prepared to push the boat out. Azabal's performance here is one of the most memorable of the year so far.

Watching Jeanne's story unravel simultaneously, however, is far less interesting. The audience is privy to more information thanJeanne and are two steps ahead at all times. Watching her flounder around the desert and picking up the wrong information is time consuming, pushing Incendies into restless bum/watch-glancing territory. The 130 minutes is felt.Denis Villeneuve explores the violence religion drags in its wake (one arresting image sees a picture of the Virgin Mary tied to the barrel of an AK-47) but that's not what you'll remember and that's not what the debate afterward will be about: it will be about that ending and does it work or not?