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INCENDIES: A LEGACY OF WAR
04/09/2010
Canadian director Denis Villeneuve’s latest film, Scorched, is jolting from the onset. After their mother dies, brother and sister Simon and Jeanne (Maxim Gaudette and Mélissa Désormeaux-Poulin) are read the mother Nawal’s (Lubna Azabal) will, in which she urges them to seek out the father they never met and the brother they never knew they had, in the Middle East, to give them a letter. The legacy the request carries with it is a difficult one to accept.
Presented today in Venice Days, the film quickly becomes a flashback look at the life of a woman who played a role her country’s history and who catapults her children into the horrors of the war of that part of the world. Their long pilgrimage ends conclude with a painful and surprising discovery, to say the least.
An adaptation of the eponymous play by Mouawad, the film is set in an unspecified country. Said Villeneuve: "Opting for an imaginary setting was an important choice. I was tempted to set the story in Lebanon, but this story arises from anger and could absolutely not risk provoking more of it, so I eliminated all political references. I was given the same advice by the writer, who furthermore gave me carte blanche to distance myself from his Scorched while still maintaining its dramatic structure.”
Mouawad in turn was inspired by the true story of an active who worked in the 1980s and lived through experiences similar to those in the film. Added the director: "I preferred to distance myself from reality in this case as well, to transfer the story to a more poetic plane.”
Villeneuve shot Scorched at the same time as Polytechnique (which screened in the 2009 Directors’ Fortnight), a story about the December 1989 tragedy in Montreal, when a young man entered a school and shot as many women as possible before killing himself. "They are two very different films,” said Villeneuve, “but they share my constant desire to tell women’s stories, in particular about violence against women. To me it is a question of responsibility.”
Michela Greco – Cinecittà News
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