Page - 191 - in JRFM - Journal Religion Film Media, Volume 03/01

Review: Regards croisés sur Incendies | 191www.jrfm.eu 2017, 3/1, 191–193 Daria Pezzoli-Olgiati Book Review Sébastien Fevry/Serge Goriely/Arnaud Join-Lambert (eds.), Regards croisés sur Incendies Du théâtre de Mouawad au cinéma de Villeneuve. Louvain-la-Neuve: L’harmattan 2016, 138 pages, isBN: 978-2-8061-0281-2 Incendies (Fires, Denis Villeneuve, CN/FR 2011) is a feature film that offers strik- ing interpretative resonances as we seek to understand extreme violence in the contemporary world, for it highlights religious legitimation, war, exile, the quest for identity, and the desire to stop this destructive, nihilistic turmoil. through the art of film, this outstanding work establishes a disturbing tension between the realistic images of film and the universalization of violence as an aspect of the human condition. The film deals with the excessively violent heritage of a female character, Nawal Marwan, during a civil war in an undefined Near Eastern country. Having lived through an endless series of highly traumatic experiences that included the murder of her lover by her brothers, the abandonment of her first child, a massacre, the killing of a party leader, jail, torture, rape, and the birth of her twins in jail, Marwan finally leaves her country for Canada, where she raises her children, works as a secretary, and eventually dies. in an unconventional testa- ment, she calls on her twins, Jeanne and simon, to confront their origins, for posthumously she asks them to find their father and brother and give them a letter. in narrating their quest for their unknown relatives in a world on which vio- lence has left indelible marks, the film analyses the response to their terrifying inheritance by a generation born in exile, by people both geographically and psychologically distant from the war and its consequences. The film expresses in a metaphorical and universal tragic language the challenge of confronting such a violent history. The film’s references to civil war function variously, with its presentation of war realistic but unspecific. The film itself is an adaptation of the stageplay Incendies by Lebanese author Wajdi Mouawad, first performed in 2003. The film does not adopt the step-by-step narrative of the play. Instead, it re- sponds to the play by exploring tragedy as a possible framework for expressing the constraints and challenges of the human condition as it encounters war and