Packs a genuinely emotional punch

Rating: Null/10 (14 February 2012)

This French Canadian film - the title translates as "Scorched" - is located mainly in an unnamed Middle Eastern country that is clearly Lebanon although it was shot in Jordan (both nations that I have visited). It tells a powerful and deeply disturbing story about how Nawal Marwan, played wonderfully by the Belgian-Moroccan actress Lubna Azabal, dies and leaves her twin daughter Jeanne (Mélissa Désormeaux-Poulin) and son Simon (Maxim Gaudette) with a strange instruction: letters must be delivered to the father they thought was dead and to a brother they did not know they had.
Based on a play, the narrative by writer and director Denis Villeneuve repeatedly jumps back and forth from the present day to several decades earlier which does not always make the story easy to follow (advice: look for three points on the back of a heel). So the viewer has to pay close attention as the twins learn more and more about their enigmatic mother and in the process themselves in some shocking turns of events. This is cinema of a high order that packs a genuinely emotional punch.