Netflix has been criticised for not directly investing in Canadian film and television. The Decline | Jusqu'au déclin marks its first Quebecois film and first Canadian film that we know of to date.
The Decline is set in a camp run by Alain (Réal Bossé), a specialist designed to survive any pending apocalypse. The participants have seen Alain's videos and are eager to be a part of the escape.
Antoine (Guillaume Laurin) has a family where they train to leave the house in record time. Rachel (Marie-Évelyne Lessard) used to be in the army. There are others but we barely learn who they are and why they are here. Alain talks about 50 migrants with 50 hatchets and how they are "lucid citzens with a common ideal."
Francois is accidentally killed and there is where the movie really starts. Alain doesn't want any trouble from the outside world. Most of the others disagree. There seems to be a motivation as to why all of them are there but that never becomes apparent for all but Antoine and Rachel.
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The Decline starts out as a survivalist film but shifts halfway to being a chase film. Neither film is compelling to the audience past guns and fights.
The screenplay by Patrice Laliberté, Charles Dionne, and Nicholas Krief feels like a paint-by-numbers set with very little imagination and thought. You could watch this movie in your sleep. Laliberté also directed the film.
The Decline does nothing to be memorable, besides the beautiful winter scenery in the north of Quebec. Chien de Garde was a bad film; The Decline is an okay film. If you need to see a Quebec film on Netflix that involves guns in a rural setting, watch Les Affames | Ravenous.
One troubling element in The Decline is the use of dubbing and subtitles. The subtitles are poorly done where there is more talking than we get in subtitles and often the subtitles are a quick flash on the screen. Turns out Netflix dubbed audio tracks in 32 languages for this film. To be fair, the English version was reportedly dubbed by the original cast. Still this isn't 1977 Europe. Netflix shows programming in multiple languages but somehow dubbed a movie in 2020.
The dialogue in the film really isn't terribly important but the audience should know that for themselves.
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The Decline is a lazy film that could have easily been done in Maine in English. The slight consolation is that the film is a quick 82 minutes. Netflix may not be interested in funding Canadian films based on The Decline. Hopefully, this film is the exception and not the rule.
The Decline is available on Netflix.
photo credit: The Decline film
video credit: YouTube/aflation Trailers
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