Les invasions barbares
Seventeen years after the events of The Decline of the American Empire, Sébastien is enjoying a successful career in quantitative finance in London when he receives a call from his mother, Louise, that his father and Louise's ex-husband Rémy is terminally ill with cancer. Sébastien is not enthused about seeing Rémy, whom he blames for breaking up the family with his many adulteries. Rémy and his friends of the older generation are still largely social-democrats and proponents of Quebec nationalism, positions seeming somewhat anachronistic long after the Quiet Revolution of the 1960s. Rémy does not like Sébastien's career, lack of reading or fondness for video games.
The father and son travel to the U.S. state of Vermont to briefly receive medical care before returning to the overcrowded and disorganized Quebec hospital. Sébastien attempts to bribe hospital administration for better care, and calls Rémy's old friends about a possible visit. Upon hearing heroin is "800%" more effective than morphine, he tracks some down for Rémy from a drug addict, Nathalie.
Meanwhile, Rémy is reunited with his friends, including Pierre, Dominique, Claude and Diane, Nathalie's mother, and they share a conversation on their old sex drive and the gradual decline of their vitality. Diane is concerned for Nathalie, while Rémy, a history professor, lectures the hospital chaplain Constance on the relative peace of the 20th century compared to past centuries. At the same time, another scholar describes the September 11 attacks as historically small except as a possible beginning of modern barbarian invasions. After Rémy and his friends retreat to the countryside, they speak of their devotion to constantly evolving -isms. Rémy dies in the company of his friends and Sébastien, after a heroin injection from Nathalie, whom Rémy calls his guardian angel.
psychological, satire, philosophical, flashback