Denys Arcand directed this French-Canadian film about corruption and collusion between government and financiers. The occasion is the opening of a new super-highway, and the contractor, Padovani. is giving a party for government officials and businessmen. From this beginning, Arcand develops a carefully detailed story about the misuse of power. In one of the film's more horrifying incidents, the financier's ex-wife appears suddenly, and is killed by one of his bodyguards, then buried in the highway before its opening. But almost all the film is shot indoors, using the dinner-party a microcosm of Canadian politics.

'Depicts in the quietest and most silvery of tones a really terrifying Watergate-type story.'

Richard Roud, Sight and Sound

'The characters are blocked out with a cold, visual precision that gives them the air of decadent Romans as well as shrewd exploitive locals.'

Mosk, Variety