Denis Villeneuve
Incendies

LA RECENSIONE

Wajdi Mouawad was born in Lebanon in '68 but in '78 he emigrated with his family to France and later in '83 settled in Canada where in '91 he graduated from the National Theatre School.

In short, among his many works, he also writes a quadrilogy for the theater centered around heritage, and from the second text of 2003 titled “Incendies”, director Denis Villeneuve would draw inspiration to freely shoot a film in 2010 with the same title (titled instead “La donna che canta” in our country).

The plot of the film can be summarized in the hereditary legacy of a mother (Nawal), a former secretary of a notary in Canada, to two twins (a boy and a girl) under one condition: that they track down and deliver each a letter, one to their father and one to their brother whom they have never known, the father being thought dead and the brother whom they didn't know they had. They will discover that Nawal is infamously known both as the prostitute 72 and as the woman who sings.

Thus begins a long journey to a Middle Eastern country (which has experienced years of internecine wars, likely similar to Lebanon), and in the meantime, the episodes that led Nawal to live an existence entirely unknown to her children are revealed, all imbued with something that evokes the Oedipal tragedy.

With this film, where the truth has a very bitter taste, mitigated only by the ending that intends to be a declaration of love to life, DV justifiably risked winning an Oscar for Best Foreign Film and ended up with nothing.