There is to be a dinner party held tonight with eight friends, some married, some with partners. The four men, all university lecturers, spend time at the house of Claude (Yves Jacques) preparing the meal and holding forth on their favourite subject: no, nothing intellectual, it's sex. Meanwhile, their partners are at the health club, and all four of them are enthusiastically discussing the same subject. But when they meet up, will they admit to each other their preoccupations? Is this shameless pleasure seeking the first sign of the end of Western civilisation as we know it?
Well, that might be stretching it a bit, but that's the theme writer and director Denys Arcand, in his first international hit, mused upon for the hundred minutes or so that it took to give these self-absorbed and well-off types their comeuppance. Even so, there's a sense that although he keeps them at arm's length, it's not because he thoroughly detests them, it's simply their flaws that he finds offputting. And what flaws they are, despite being the kind of people you could probably have a perfectly decent conversation with, as far as the abundance of talk that we're subjected to here goes the subject would always return to whose sexual company they were enjoying at any one time.
However, there's a serious side to all this apparently lighthearted gabbing - it's kind of a comedy, it must be noted. We hear an explanation from Diane (Louse Portal) about the welts on her back that Dominique (Dominique Michel) notices in the locker room, and it's down to the sadomasochistic relationship she's having with her new boyfriend. Not quite a grown up version of a typical sitcom, then, and when Claude visits the bathroom we see he is pissing blood, another indication of the encroaching seriousness in the narrative. Does the homosexual Claude have a sexually transmitted disease? He admits to cruising the local park for sex, so could it be AIDS, which nobody ever mentions in the film but which is surely becoming a shadow on all of their promiscuous lives?
In fact, the humour may be there in a character-based way, but there's not much to make you laugh out loud. The men cheerfully admit to sleeping around and boast about their conquests, as the women do the same - they do more laughing than you will. Yet when they do meet up about an hour in, the conversation is strictly highbrow, making the arrival of Diane's rough and deeply unimpressed boyfriend something of a mood destroyer. While the guests compliment the fish pie, he wants to indulge in the sex they have been chatting about for the whole film, but are too polite to say so when their other halves show up. And then there's the cruel admission that arrives near the end that proves that they live in an ivory tower of sorts, and real emotion is something they can't cope with, preferring casual sex and airy intellectualism. For this reason you may resent the time you spend with them. Music by François Dompierre.
