Reel Alternatives’ next movie on April 7 is L’Âges des Ténèbres (Days of Darkness), the just released feature from acclaimed Quebeçois director Denis Arcand, and the final installment in the trilogy that began with The Decline of the American Empire and the Academy Award-winning The Barbarian Invasions. Feted at both the 2007 Toronto International and Cannes Film Festivals, L’Âges des Ténèbres features the signature blend of comedy, slapstick, tragedy and incisive social commentary that has unified Arcand’s filmmaking and made him a favourite of cinephiles around the world.

 The main character, Jean-Marc (Marc Labrèche), is a civil servant desperately unsatisfied in his daily life. He has an indifferent wife, two daughters who ignore him and a terrifically frustrating job at the fictionalized bureaucracy of the Citizen’s Rights Department, which sticks him at a desk in a relocated office inside a stadium. He is, however, an incurable dreamer and takes to disappearing into an elaborate fantasy life where he is free to be famous, suave and sought-after; he adopts the roles of mythic hero, successful author, famed actor and, above all, irresistible lover.

Increasingly, however, his real life keeps losing out to the dream world and the possibility arises that Jean-Marc’s reality will drift away completely. At the same time, his daydreams present their own problems, especially when his dream women begin to object to Jean-Marc’s ineffectuality, and complain about always winding up in losers’ fantasies.

Arcand’s film owes much to the past masters of French cinema but, but Jean-Marc’s ramblings through an indifferent social landscape have been brilliantly updated for the twenty-first century, a world of iPods, sweeping epidemics and mandatory motivational lectures. Featuring fabulous performances, including those by Diane Kruger and Emma de Caunes as the unruly temptresses of Jean-Marc’s make-believe double life, L’Âges des Ténèbres is another stellar work of deadpan social criticism from a true master.

L’Âges des Ténèbres is sponsored by Blackburn’s Steakhouse and will be shown at 7 p.m. on April 7 at the Capitol Twin Cinema. It is rated 14A for nudity, language and sexual content. Advance tickets are $7 at Muskoka Country Furniture and Gifts on Main Street, or $8 at the door if available. To see more about this non-profit group’s movies and projects visit reelalternativeshuntsville.ca.