Incendies

One of the nominees for last year's Oscar for Best Foreign Language film, Incendies straddles two worlds. It concerns Canadian siblings, twins, who listen to their mother's will being read. They discover two amazing things: their father is alive, and they have a brother.

Simon (Maxim Gaudette), wants nothing to do with this mystery, but his sister Jeanne (Melissa Desormeaux-Poulin) travels to her mother's homeland of Lebanon. We then see, in flashback, the mother's (Lubna Azabal) harrowing story. She is exiled from her family for loving a refugee, to whom she bears a son that is given up for adoption. She goes to the city, attends a university, and gets involved in the political upheaval of a civil war. Eventually she is imprisoned.

Jeanne can hardly believe the stories she hears. She has grown up in quiet, peaceful Canada, and is a graduate assistant for a mathematics professor. Her mother had never told her anything of her background, and when she discovers her mother was raped in prison, she jumps to an incorrect conclusion. Later, when Simon joins in the hunt, he explains the shocking truth to her in a mathematical equation--the simplest possible math problem, which refers back to the beginning of the film, when the professor mentions that they will be studying insoluble problems.

Incendies, written and directed by Denis Villenueve, has an old-fashioned structure, but has the shock of the new. Though the ultimate reveal has the stuff of melodrama, it packs a punch, particularly when a man stands at the grave of Azabal. There are some other gut-wrenching scenes of wanton cruelty, such as when a bus of civilians is attacked by right-wing Christians.

I have one more Foreign Film nominee from 2010 to go, and it's sitting on my TV. I'll have a review up shortly, but I doubt it will top Incendies, which should have won the award.