Denis Villeneuve’s Incendies is a harrowing family mystery, worth seeing for Lubna Azabal’s restrained performance and its patient storytelling. Some contrived plotting weakens the effect without making the suffering any easier to watch.
Denis Villeneuve’s Incendies asks how much children can know about a parent who has kept her past from them. It is a harrowing, absorbing film, worth seeing despite a screenplay that relies too heavily on coincidence. Jeanne and Simon Marwan’s search runs alongside flashbacks to their mother Nawal’s life amid Middle Eastern conflict. Villeneuve gives the investigation enough suspense to make us impatient for answers, then makes learning about that life difficult to bear.
Mélissa Désormeaux-Poulin and Maxim Gaudette have the difficult task of keeping the children’s investigation alive beside the more forceful material given to Azabal. Their performances make the need to know feel personal, although the writing sometimes confines them to asking the next question. Rémy Girard, as Notary Lebel, is welcome for the calm he brings to such solemn material. These quieter performances are useful in a film so committed to making each discovery hurt.
Azabal carries the greatest burden, playing Nawal across the history the children are trying to recover. Her Nawal seems to be using up energy simply keeping her feelings under control. We were moved by that effort, especially by the anger that remains present when she is quiet. She allows the character dignity without making endurance look effortless or admirable in itself. The scenes depend on her ability to hold our attention without continually increasing the emotional pressure.
André Turpin’s cinematography gives Nawal’s past the same immediacy as the investigation, so the flashbacks never feel like illustrations supplied to explain a clue. André-Line Beauparlant’s production design gives the Middle Eastern passages a sense of daily life continuing around the family’s ordeal. That matters because the screenplay is inclined to make every part of this history serve the mystery, and the surroundings help us imagine lives it cannot follow.
Monique Dartonne’s editing is just as important to the film’s control. Cutting between the investigation and Nawal’s past, she keeps the relationships between the timelines clear while making each return feel necessary. The pace allows information to register instead of treating confusion as a useful source of suspense. Grégoire Hetzel’s score reinforces the solemnity, occasionally more firmly than the performances need. This is already a grave film, and the music’s insistence can make the quieter stretches feel overemphasised.
The principal reservation lies with the screenplay by Villeneuve and Valérie Beaugrand-Champagne. Its determination to connect the family’s history to the violence around it makes some lives seem improbably convenient to the story. The coincidences require a degree of belief that the sober treatment has not prepared us to give. Family mysteries often run into this problem: each connection can be satisfying on its own, while the accumulation starts to feel arranged. Here the actors have to keep overcoming our doubts about the writing.
The 131 minutes are demanding, and the restraint should not be mistaken for gentleness. Villeneuve gives suffering time to register, with Azabal doing much of the work that makes it bearable to watch. This is worth an evening for those performances, provided a family mystery is not being chosen as light distraction. Leave some quiet afterwards, rather than putting on another film.
