Testament

Directed by Denys Arcand, Testament follows Rémy Girard’s Jean-Michel Bouchard as his quiet life within a retirement home is disrupted by the arrival of several noisy protesters. Filmmaker Arcand, working from his own screenplay, delivers a periodically compelling yet wildly uneven endeavor that fares best in its low-key opening stretch, as the movie, which runs a palpably overlong 115 minutes, boasts an opening stretch revolving almost entirely around the engrossing exploits of Girard’s pragmatic figure – with the engaging atmosphere heightened by Jean-Michel’s appealingly existential narration. There’s little doubt, then, that Testament‘s impact is dulled significantly by a hit-and-miss midsection riddled with questionable instances of comedy and eye-rollingly obvious instances of satire, and it is, as such, impossible not to wish that Arcand had streamlined the movie’s slapdash narrative to a fairly extreme degree – with the picture generally succeeding when focused on the characters subdued relationships and encounters. (There is, for example, a terrific scene wherein Jean-Michel and Sophie Lorain’s Suzanne have an honest, emotional conversation about their lives.) By the time the amusing (yet far-from-subtle) final shot rolls around, Testament has confirmed its place as a decent-enough drama that ranks somewhere in the middle of Arcand’s rocky body of work.

**1/2 out of ****