Incendies

Director Denis Villeneuve adapts Wajdi Mouawad’s play, whose title means “scorched,” with a careful balance of sensitivity and ferocity. Two Canadian siblings (Mélissa Désormeaux-Poulin, Maxim Gaudette) receive instructions from their Middle Eastern mother (Lubna Azabal), upon her death, to find the father they never knew and the half-brother they never knew about. Their quest leads to an unnamed but highly Lebanon-like country whose ravages of patriarchal religious militancy, played out in a hypnotic and horrifying spiral of atrocities, shaped their mother’s life. Stacking up political and family melodrama in a big heap of classical and contemporary tragedy, Villeneuve manages not to be morose, nor to exploit the enraged cyclical violence he depicts. Although obliquely composed, formally chapterized, Radiohead-abetted and occasionally pretentious or even preposterous, Incendies powers itself with wise and subtle performances—especially from the women, whose multifaceted fortitude burns brightly behind their eyes. Hollywood hasn’t really been able to handle anything like this for decades, but at least had the sense to nominate it for a Foreign Language Oscar last year.