In 1986, French-Canadian writer/director Denys Arcand gave us “The Decline of the American Empire,” about a bunch of bourgeois baby-boomers who gather one day and banter glibly about their freewheeling sex lives. “Decline” aimed to be a snapshot of a civilization’s “declining” years—an age marked by indulgent individualism. Ordinarily, I would consider it a titillating treat to sit in on a conversation about carnal escapades, obsessions and misadventures. But Arcand’s movie neither titillated nor informed, so devoid was it of any moral perspective. We felt no sympathy for its characters because they seemed so far-gone in their own narcissism to be capable of any sympathy themselves. Their lack of personal struggle and genuine feeling killed any connection we might’ve had with them. Even more heinous, though, was Arcand’s smarmy adoration of these imbeciles. Never before has the urge to step inside a movie with a blowtorch and set fire to its characters been more excruciatingly felt.

“Decline” garnered a Best Foreign Language Film Oscar nomination and its 2003 follow-up, “The Barbarian Invasions” repeats that trick this year. Arcand’s sensibilities, unfortunately, have not budged; he is too enamored of his characters to manage much in the way of satire or humanism, and too inept a storyteller to make us even vaguely care.

In “Barbarians” Arcand revisits his characters from “Decline,” to find one of them, Rémy (Rémy Girard), dying of cancer and the others gathered about to see him off. Rémy, ever the insatiable adulterer, is now divorced from Louise (Dorothée Berryman) and estranged from his son, Sébastien (Stéphane Rousseau), an investment banker in Europe. He detests Sébastien’s career choice and dreads the “invasion” of capitalism upon his generation’s fervent socialism. At Louise’s urging, though, Sébastien agrees to help his father die more comfortably. Flashing his money around, he arranges to move him out of his cramped, drably socialist hospital room and into a made-to-order suite downstairs. And to take the edge off, Sébastien sets Rémy up with a regular supply of heroin thanks to his junkie-friend, Nathalie (Marie-Josée Croze), whose blissed-out beauty conveys anything but an addict’s desperation

Meanwhile, the scenes between Rémy and friends feel as one-note and tedious as before, but reeking now with the rank odor of nostalgia. If Pierre isn’t boasting about his boners, the gay Claude is pooh-poohing his waning libido or Diane is asserting her continued preference for a no-questions-asked screwing. They otherwise bemoan the passing of an age, but, under Arcand’s dully prosaic handling, these elegiac moments manage nothing of the revealing depth or nuance they need to breathe. His script is jerkily paced, dramatically obvious, and seems penned by a self-serious 16-year-old. “Barbarians” is lifted by a whiff of a comedic breeze and flexed by a more robust dramatic muscle than its coldly rigid predecessor. But, if you want a satisfying portrait of the monied class, stick to Altman or Bunũel. Otherwise, I rest assured knowing that, unlike the litany of bygone “-isms” that Arcand’s hedonist-intellectuals like to mourn, the bastions of good storytelling can never be sallied.