Incendies

Incendies acquires its heft from some very deep places -- Greek tragedy rather than newsflashes.

Normally I'm against decent original stories being dumbed down and squashed into bog-standard thriller shapes. But Incendies is in dire need of some dumbing down.

It isn't easy to open out a well-respected stage play without losing a lot of its bite and subtlety.

Denis Villeneuve's tormented family drama strips off one layer of meaning after another on its way to a thoroughly jolting terminus.

It is not really believable, and yet if it is not taken literally, but as a cinematic prose-poem, it has undoubted force.

Incendies is in essence a family drama, astonishingly intense but impressively poised.

…this might not be his best known work, but Incendies is probably Villeneuve's best film to date&#59; if you’re willing to witness the aftermath of unspeakable events, it’s a particularly potent exploration of the twisted morality of a terrorist act…

The steely elegance of Villeneuve’s emphatic camera movements and framing are as much of the “story” as the terrors past unearthed by two grown, yet innocent children.

Before he was surfing the sand dunes of Arakkis, Denis Villeneuve was telling a more searing story about overzealous characters waging a holy war in the desert.

It is, indisputably, Villeneuve's best film. [Full review in Spanish]