The third in the informal trilogy about western decadence and eroding values that began with The Decline of American Civilization (1986) and continued with The Barbarian Invasions (2003), Denys Arcand’s latest is a caustic satire that has little of the affection the director expressed for his characters in the film’s predecessors. Days of Darkness’ Everyman hero is Jean-Marc (Marc Labreche), a pencil-pushing bureaucrat in a near-future Quebec with Walter Mitty–like fantasies of a more glamorous life. Diane Kruger literally plays the woman of his dreams while Familia’s Macha Grenon has a memorable turn as a flesh-and-blood belle dame sans merci.

Though the shots at office life, fraying family ties, media inanity and political correctness mostly hit their targets, the film’s momentum sputters out during an ill-conceived sequence in which Arcand tries to argue we’ve entered a new Dark Age — instead, he demonstrates why most of us don’t go to medieval fairs. Arcand has long been a master at balancing the bitter and the sweet but here the flavours are off, resulting in a sour concoction that ultimately says less about the society it satirizes than its director’s dyspeptic outlook. Canada’s most recent submission for Academy Awards contention, Days of Darkness is nevertheless Arcand’s least satisfying outing since Love and Human Remains (and yes, I actually liked Stardom).