Incendies

With apologies to Christopher Nolan and Terrence Malick, a simple story is sometimes the best option. Take Incendies, for example. The French film opens with fraternal twins hearing the last wishes of their mother: Take two sealed letters to the Middle East, and deliver them to your father and your half-brother. The twins thought the father was dead and never knew about the brother. That’s a great and very manageable springboard for a movie, and Incendies makes it pay off. Thanks to flashbacks of the mother, conjoined with the daughter’s journey to piece together the family mysteries, Incendies strikes a rare and sometimes beautiful chord.