WAITING FOR ARCAND English version of latest film delayed
Quebecers who want English version of new Arcand film will have to wait until fall
The latest film from Oscar-winning Montreal writer-director Denys Arcand will be launched en français only here in Quebec next week.
La chute de l’empire américain (The Fall of the American Empire) will be given a major release across Quebec on Thursday, June 28.
But in spite of the fact that Arcand is the Québécois filmmaker best known and most loved by anglo audiences ici, distributor Les Films Séville will not be opening a single copy with English subtitles.
So if you are an anglophone who is not fluently bilingual, you will have to wait until the late fall at the earliest to catch this much-anticipated film. And it’s an important film — critics are already calling this philosophical thriller the best thing Arcand has made since The Barbarian Invasions, which won the Oscar for best foreign-language film in 2004.
The Fall of the American Empire — which, title not- withstanding, is not a sequel to Arcand’s 1986 classic The Decline of the American Empire — is a thought-provoking, entertaining drama about a courier driver who stumbles upon an armed robbery and ends up with two big bags holding millions of dollars in cash.
Producer Denise Robert said the fact they’re not releasing a copy with English subtitles is a non-issue.
“How come they haven’t learned French?” Robert asked. “They’ve been here for how many years? We’re in Quebec. How come these people don’t speak French yet ... They should learn French. I hang around with anglophones and none of them are unilingual … you tell me what anglophone doesn’t speak French.”
I told Robert, whom I have known for more than 20 years, that there probably isn’t another anglophone who believes as strongly as I do that all of us blokes should speak the language of Tremblay. If you live in Quebec, you should speak French and all of those anglos in my parents’ generation who didn’t parlez-vous caused an enormous amount of trouble for everyone in this province.
That said, there are some English Quebecers who are not totally fluent in French, and it’s a shame with gusts up to an outrage that Robert and the film company Séville are not bothering to pay enough respect to give these people a copy with subtitles. Why not release just one or two copies, maybe one at the Forum and another out in the West Island? I often receive emails from people who are unhappy when Québécois films are not released with English subtitles.
The reason they’re not doing this for the new Arcand film is because an American film company asked Robert not to provide an English-language version. The Fall of the American Empire was bought in mid-May by powerful U.S. distributor Sony Pictures Classics, with the company picking up rights to the film in the U.S., Latin America, Australia and New Zealand. The executives at Sony Pictures Classics asked Robert to hold off on making an English-subtitled version available before it is released in the U.S., which will probably be in the late fall.
“Because of piracy, if you release the film in a subtitled version here, it will systematically find itself on the streets of New York,” Robert said. “It was very important for us to have Sony on board. They said they could not buy it if it was released ahead of time (with English subtitles).”
The plan is to launch The Fall of the American Empire simultaneously in the U.S. and English Canada late this year, and that’s a plan that makes sense for audiences in Toronto and Calgary. But it somehow just seems wrong that the Arcand film will be coming out here, but not in a version that can be appreciated by anglophones who aren’t fully fluent in French.
English Montrealers love Arcand’s films and, sadly, this time not all of them will be able to fully appreciate his latest work.