The Barbarian Invasions is a witty, tender and intelligent drama comedy from award winning writer-director Denys Arcand. (His films, The Decline of The American Empire and Jesus of Montreal were both released by Artificial Eye).

In his younger days as a university professor Remy (Remy Girard) was known for his love of women, words and lust for life. Now divorced and in his early fifties, Remy is hospitalised and awaits his ordeal in an over-crowded hospital in Montreal.

Unbeknown to him, his sympathetic ex-wife, Louise (Dorothee Berryman), asks their son Sebastien (Stephane Rousseau) to come home from London where he now lives as a successful financial wheeler and dealer. Sebastien hesitates; he and his father haven't had much to say to one another for years now. In fact they detest each other. To Remy, Sebastien represents the barbarian at the gates of the citadel - acquisitive, non-intellectual, and threatening everything Remy holds dear. Sebastien for his part is equally contemptuous of his father who abandoned him and his mother.

However Sebastien relents, and flies to Montreal with his beautiful fiancée to support his father, and help his mother. As soon as he arrives Sebastien is appalled by the terrible conditions in which Remy is placed and puts his financial dealing techniques and abundant cash to work greasing palms at every turn; bribing and cajoling administrators, union leaders, ex-students and policemen in order to make his father's growing illness more comfortable. He also meets up with an old childhood friend Nathalie, (Cannes Best Actress Winner Marie Jose Croze) whose access to illicit drugs will also play a role, and whose innocence and vulnerability will attract Sebastien when he least expects it.

Sebastien also reunites Remy with his closest friends and former mistresses - most of whom he has not seen in years. What have they become in this age of "barbarian invasions"? Is the old irreverence, friendship and truculence still there? Do humour, hedonism and desire still inhabit their dreams?