The Decline of the American Empire
| The Decline of the American Empire | |
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French-language film poster
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| Directed by | Denys Arcand |
| Produced by |
Roger Frappier René Malo |
| Written by | Denys Arcand |
| Starring |
Dominique Michel Dorothée Berryman Rémy Girard Pierre Curzi Louise Portal Yves Jacques Geneviève Rioux Daniel Brière Gabriel Arcand |
| Music by | François Dompierre |
| Cinematography | Guy Dufaux |
| Edited by | Monique Fortier |
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Release date
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Running time
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101 minutes |
| Country | Canada |
| Language | French English |
| Budget | $1.8 million |
| Box office | $30 million |
The Decline of the American Empire (French: Le Déclin de l'empire américain) is a 1986 French Canadian sex comedy-drama film directed by Denys Arcand and starring Rémy Girard, Pierre Curzi and Dorothée Berryman. The film follows a group of intellectual friends from the Université de Montréal history department as they engage in a long dialogue about their sexual affairs, touching on issues of adultery, homosexuality, group sex, BDSM and prostitution. A number of characters associate self-indulgence with societal decline.
The film was a box office success in Quebec and Canada and internationally, and received good reviews. It won the FIPRESCI Prize at the Cannes Film Festival, nine Genie Awards, including Best Motion Picture, and was the first Canadian film nominated for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. It was followed by two sequels, The Barbarian Invasions in 2003 and Days of Darkness in 2007.
In an interview with CBC Radio, Université de Montréal History Professor Dominique St. Arnaud tells Diane about her new book, Variations on the Idea of Happiness, which discusses her thesis that modern society's fixation on self-indulgence is indicative of its decline, predicting a collapse in the "American Empire," of which Quebec is on the periphery. Several of Dominique and Diane's friends, mostly intellectual history professors at the university, prepare for a dinner later in the day, with the men at work in the kitchen while the women work out at the gym.
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