NZIFF Film Review: "Incendies" (2010).

"The search began at the opening of their mother's will." This is at the story of Incendies. This Canadian mystery-drama film directed by Denis Villeneuve, adapted by Villeneuve and Valérie Beaugrand-Champagne from Wajdi Mouawad's play of the same name. Fraternal twins, Jeanne and Simon, journey from Montreal to an unnamed Middle Eastern country to fulfill their mother's dying wish to locate two lost family members; their quest parallels their mother's difficult adolescence in the midst of a religious civil war in the 1970s.

In 2004, Villeneuve first saw Mouawad's play at Théâtre de Quat'Sous in Montreal. Villeneuve acknowledged unfamiliarity with Arab culture, but was drawn to Incendies as "a modern story with a sort of Greek tragedy element". In adapting the screenplay, Villeneuve, while keeping the story structure and characters, replaced "all" the dialogue, even envisioning a silent film, abandoning the idea due to expense. He showed Mouawad some completed scenes to convince the initially reluctant playwright to grant permission for the film. Villeneuve spent five years working on the screenplay, in between directing two films. Mouawad later praised the film as "brilliantly elegant" and gave Villeneuve full credit. For the part of Nawal, Villeneuve said he conducted an extensive search for actresses across Canada. He considered casting the main character to be the most challenging, and at one point contemplated using two or three actresses to play the character, since the story spans four decades. He finally met Moroccan Belgian actress Lubna Azabal in Paris, intrigued by her "expressive and eloquent" face in Paradise Now (2005). Although she was 30, Villeneuve thought she appeared 18 and could play the part throughout the entire film, using makeup. With a budget of $6.5 million, the film was shot in Montreal and Jordan. The film took 40 days to shoot with Villeneuve aiming to film no scene without being sure it would not be cut. For the scenes filmed in Jordan, Villeneuve used a Lebanese and Iraqi crew, though he feared the war scenes would be too reminiscent of bad experiences for them. However, he said the Arab crew members felt "It’s important that those sorts of stories are on the screen".

The film stars Lubna Azabal, Mélissa Désormeaux-Poulin, Maxim Gaudette, and Rémy Girard. Tour de force performances were given by the cast, especially by Azabal, who gave a performance that was just as much of an emotional rollercoaster ride as Nawal's life.

Incendies is a nice follow-up to Villeneuve's 2009 film, Polytechnique, another story of vengeance and forgiveness in a cruel, cold world. The virtue, and also the limitation, of this film is that it confronts senselessness and insists on remaining calm and sane. It is a hundred and thirty minutes of pure cinema in which the Canadian director skilfully handles a subject as difficult as the undermined but powerful feminism. The pure emotion and the truths layered into the film are raw, real and devastating. Almost from beginning to end, we're filled with dread and, I must say, a morbid sense of anticipation.

Simon says Incendies receives: