L'âge des ténèbres (Days of Darkness/The Age of Ignorance), Denys Arcand, 2007
Arcand's film is a broad, at times clumsy, dystopian farce. In crafting an ultimately bleak vision, the director's machinations recall, by turns, the playful workplace revenge fantasies of Mike Judge and the darkest, most cheeky subversions of Lars Von Trier.
Koreeda's measured compositions, often near facsimiles of Ozu, lend a certain gravitas to this domestic meditation. The film tangles with death, guilt, and family in a way not dissimilar from the recent films of Assayas and Desplechin.