Dumont’s Slack Bay

Belle Époque France never looked so grotesque. The idle rich still come to the Opal Coast to be even less productive, but this time it is they who will become fodder for the rustic locals. Class distinctions and gender roles will take a bizarre thrashing in Bruno Dumont’s Slack Bay (trailer here), an absurdist comedy with the emphasis on the absurd, which opens this Friday in New York.

The Van Peteghems have come to summer at Slack Bay, because that is what respectable people do. Unbeknownst to them, the clam-digging, muscle-harvesting Brufort family has been killing and eating obnoxious bourgeoisie tourists, both for reasons of class consciousness and to put food on the table. Stoop shouldered André Van Peteghem sets a whole new standard for condescension and his sister Aude might be even snobbier. Yet, somehow the Peteghems could be too ridiculous for the Bruforts to kill.

Of course, it does not hurt that oldest Brufort son Ma Loute has fallen head over heels for Aude’s daughter Billie. Technically, the local police chief Alfred Machin and his deputy Malfoy are still investigating the missing tourists, but they inspire less confidence than their obvious inspiration, Laurel and Hardy. When the rotund Machin tips over on his side, it requires quite a laborious effort to right him, so they should not pose much threat to the Bruforts. However, Ma Loute has yet to see Billie when she is in the mood to pull back her hair and don her Annie Hall wardrobe. Her family always accepted he gender playfulness rather casually, because they simply aren’t the sorts to get worked up over anything, but her new proletarian boyfriend is cut from a different cloth—in just about every possible sense.

It is almost impossible to convey the tone and viewing experience of Slack Bay. In many ways, it looks stylistically akin to Dumont’s sly and shocking endearing Li’l Quinquin, but it retains undercurrents of the old, grimly fatalistic Dumont who helmed laugh-a-minute films like Hors Satan and the unremittingly punishing Flanders. In Slack Bay, human nature is irredeemably tainted, but it’s a lovely day, so let’s go to the beach.

At times, the slapstick humor and wacky fantastical realism of Slack Bay makes Tom & Jerry look subtle, but you have to admire the dogged determination with which it is plied. To be honest, there are scenes of such lunacy it made your correspondent laugh out loud, but he was the only one laughing during the screening. Indeed, Dumont’s visuals can be overwhelming. Think of the film as day-to-day scenes from The Village in Patrick McGoohan’s The Prisoner, as rendered by Bill Plympton collaborating with Honoré Daumier.

You have probably never seen Juliette Binoche act so Meryl Streepy over-the-top, but she just doubles and triples down as the stately Aude Van Peteghem. On the other hand, Fabrice Luchini is totally in his element as the Van Peteghem patriarch (sort of like Frasier Crane raised to the power of one hundred). Brandon Lavieville’s Ma Loute (the titular character in its original French release) is rather dully brutish, whereas the economically-named Raph has a bright but suitably ambiguous screen presence as Billie Van Peteghem. Yet, Didier Després and Cyril Rigaux steal the show over and over again. As Manchin and Malfoy, they are a spectacle unto themselves.

It is nearly impossible to believe the gleefully anarchical Slack Bay was crafted by the same filmmaker who helmed the dreary, didactic Hadewijch, but here it is. This is the sort of film that has to be seen to be believed. Every critic compares this magnum peculiarity to Buñel, but the grand set pieces of Terry Gilliam and Mel Brooks’ buckshot-scattergun approach to comedy are nearly as apt. Everyone really should see Slack Bay, just so they can disbelieve their own eyes, especially if they have restively sat through previous Dumont films. Recommended for those who appreciate eccentricity on an epic scale, Slack Bay opens this Friday (4/21) in New York, at the Quad Cinema downtown and the Film Society of Lincoln Center uptown.

NYFF ’14: Li’l Quinquin

It’s not Broadchurch and it’s certainly not Gracepoint, thank heavens. Murder will plague a provincial northern seaside village and deep secrets will be revealed, but everyone largely takes it in stride. This is especially true of the young troublemaking protagonist of Bruno Dumont’s Li’l Quinquin (trailer here), a four part French miniseries that screens in its entirety as a special presentation at the 52nd NewYork Film Festival.

The small but forceful Li’l Quinquin is more Napoleon than Huck Finn, but he is sweet and gentle with his girl friend Eve. She certainly appreciates the attention, because most of the town is focused on her teenaged sister’s audition concert for a French reality show. At least that was the big story around town, until a dead cow was improbably found in a remote WWII bunker. It happened to be a mad cow, with people parts inside it. That person was Madame LeBleu, the wife of a well to do farmer, who was having an affair with Bhiri, a kosher butcher for the local Muslim immigrant community. He too soon turns up dead, under similar circumstances, but he will not be the last to meet a premature end.

Captain Van Der Weyden will investigate the crime as best he can, but it is hard to imagine a flatfoot who inspires less confidence. A twitchy, socially dysfunctional bumbler prone to Tourrete-like squawking, Van Der Weyden is out of his depth, but he never passes up a chance for an annoying Colombo-like confrontation. Naturally, Li’l Quinquin rubs him the wrong way—and the feeling is mutual.

Anyone who has seen Dumont’s last four or five films would not have thought comedy was part of the severe auteur’s skill set, but he uncorks a genuine surprise with Li’l Quinquin. Of course, by comedy, we mean humor that is very dark and very dry (isn’t that the best kind?), punctuated by moments of almost slapstick absurdity. Yet, it still bears hallmarks of Dumont’s signature style, such as the lonely windswept vistas, the striking long takes, and the unsettling feeling that evil exists and its proximity is uncomfortably close.

As the title character, Alane Delhaye is hilarious, scary as heck, and more than half credible as a leading man. He is unusually expressive—you might even say his expressions are bizarre, but he commands the screen. Frankly, the film/mini-series would have been a train-wreck without him. However, Bernard Pruvost is almost just as weirdly effective as Van Der Weyden, a veritable bundle of tics and inappropriate comments, whose face appears to be about ninety percent eyebrows.

Despite its length (a mere two hundred minutes), Li’l Quinquin is Dumont’s most accessible work, by a country mile. The vibe roughly feels like he remade Hors Satan (his best recent prior film) with the Little Rascals. While some heavy-handed statement making regarding the town’s racist attitudes towards their unassimilated immigrant population adds a bit of unnecessary clunkiness, Dumont’s idiosyncratic humor still makes the considerable running pass quite swiftly. Highly recommended for fans of slightly surreal mysteries in the Twin Peaks tradition, Li’l Quinquin screens tomorrow (10/2) at the Beale, as part of this year’s NYFF.

Dumont’s Camille Claudel 1915

Camille Claudel is a woman of extraordinary associations.  She was the sister of playwright Paul Claudel, the mistress of Auguste Rodin, and was once erroneously thought to be the lover of Claude Debussy.  In the cinema, she has been played by Isabelle Adjani and now Juliette Binoche, but in reality, she led a deeply troubled life.  Bruno Dumont picks up with Claudel two years after her family institutionalized the sculptor, dramatizing three anesthetizing days leading up to her brother’s visit in Camille Claudel 1915 (trailer here), which opens this Wednesday at Film Forum.

Her brother blames the artistic temperament and perhaps he is right.  Regardless, his sister clearly suffers from paranoia and a persecution complex.  Unfortunately, her commitment rather vindicates the latter.  Since she is convinced her food is constantly poisoned by her multitude of enemies, Claudel has special dispensation to cook her own meals.  Given her mostly calm demeanor, the sisters give her relatively free reign at Ville Evrard and even recruit her reluctant help with more quarrelsome patients. Nevertheless, if you ask her about her situation you will get an earful.

1915 is easily Dumont’s most accessible film in years, but it still bears the hallmarks of his aesthetic severity.  If you hum a few bars of anything during the film, you will become the soundtrack.  Color is also rather scarce.  However, there are plenty of static shots framing Claudel as her spirit slowly ebbs away.

Having previously invited sympathy for the Devil with Hors Satan and suggested all devout Christians are a wink and a nod away from becoming Islamist suicide bombers in Hadewijch, Dumont will not surprise anyone with his unforgiving view of Paul Claudel, the devout Catholic dramatist. He sharply contrasts the ascetic austerity of the writer with the more sensual feeling of the sister.  Yet, given his affinity for extremity, the rigidly disciplined Claudel ought to be more in his wheel house.

Jean-Luc Vincent duly plays Frere Paul as the cold, clammy caricature Dumont requires.  It hardly matters. He is a distant second fiddle to Binoche’s title character—a role perfectly suited to her strengths.  Nobody could better convey the roiling passions submerged beneath her glacial exterior or convincingly erupt in pained outrage when provoked.  She is a force to be reckoned with, nearly undermining Dumont’s feminist-victimization narrative. Somehow thanks to Dumont’s powers of persuasion, 1915 was filmed with real nursing home patients playing Claudel’s fellow residents and their nurses playing the nuns, adding further dimensions of authenticity and exploitation into the mix.

Ironically, it is the work of Paul Claudel that is most ripe for re-discovery (as the Black Friars Repertory demonstrated in New York with their Claudel revival project), whereas reproductions of the sculptor’s La Valse are widely available.  Regardless, Binoche delivers a remarkable performance in an otherwise flawed film.  Best reserved for her loyal admirers and hardcore French art cinema enthusiasts, Camille Claudel 1915 opens this Wednesday (10/16) at Film Forum for all of New York.

Dumont’s Hors Satan

According to traditional Christian theology, evil is not the opposite of good, it is the perversion.  That could also be the motto engraved on Bruno Dumont’s family crest.  Ever the aesthetically and thematically challenging auteur, Dumont again focuses on extreme manifestations of faith, lust, and wrath, which may or may not be fundamentally intertwined in his latest film, Hors Satan (trailer here), opening this Friday at the Anthology Film Archives.

“The Guy” awakens in a rugged field somewhere in the northern French Côte d’Opale.  When he knocks on a door, an unseen woman’s arm gives him his daily bread.  Soon the vagrant will be joined by the slightly goth “Girl.”  Suddenly the morning stillness is broken when he delivers retribution to her abusive stepfather with a hunting rifle.  It is a shocking, but matter-of-fact incident that hardly seems to interrupt the Guy’s regular routine.

Many times we watch his morning prayers and alms, as well the innumerable long walks he takes with the Girl.  She is definitely interested in him, but seems above and beyond temptations of the flesh.  Yet, at times he performs ostensive exorcisms that are overtly (and violently) sexualized.  In several keys scenes, sex is either a purifying or corrupting force.  Dumont leaves such judgments frustratingly indeterminate.

Compared to Dumont’s ethically muddled Hadewijch and his brutally didactic Flanders, Hors Satan is paradoxically less accessible but more spiritually engaging.  Despite the moral ambiguity of the central figure, HS explores issues of faith in good faith, so to speak.  The Guy is clearly an archetypal holy fool, but if he should fall from grace, would the villagers realize it?

Arguably, David Dewaele is not really playing a flesh-and-blood character as the Guy, but a focus for the projections of both the Girl and the audience.  Nonetheless, his gaunt look and vague sense of menace are undeniably effective.  As the Girl, Alexandra Lamatre’s raw earthiness and wide-eyed innocence are quite arresting, wholly suiting Dumont’s austerity.

Shunning any kind of soundtrack music or post-sound, Dumont recorded his cast in the moment, with only the natural ambient background as accompaniment.  Wind through the grass was never so audibly ominous.  This is a tres deliberate film that can tax viewer indulgence in six or seven ways simultaneously.  However, it has a specific and dramatic end in mind.  If you see only one Dumont film, this might be the one to choose.  Recommended for adventurous cineastes fully cognizant of Dumont’s style, Hors Satan opens this Friday (1/18) in New York at the Anthology Film Archives.

Blinding Faith: Hadewijch

Céline obviously never read Eric Hoffer. Ardent devotion is all very well and good, but her excessive self-denial thoroughly creeps out the nuns of her prospective order. At least the leader of the local Islamist terror cell appreciates her extreme need for an ecstatic religious experience in Bruno Dumont’s Hadewijch (trailer here), which in a case of rather odd timing opens this Friday, Christmas Eve, in New York at the IFC Center.

Céline is known as Hadewijch in the convent, where she has turned the sisters into Italian mothers, who implore her to eat something and dress warmly. Gently but firmly, they send her back to her life as Céline and her parents fabulously opulent Parisian home, for the sake of her health and stability. However, her budding platonic friendship with Yassine, a horny Muslim youth from the projects, brings her into the orbit of his older, radical brother Nassir. Sensing her vulnerability and idealization of martyrdom, he whisks off for a whirlwind tour of the West Bank. Those only slightly more intuitive than Céline will realize Nassir has some rather ominous plans for her.

To Dumont’s credit, Hadewijch is far superior to his previous film, the brutal and didactic Flanders. Though it is a quiet film burdened with a heavy allegorical load, Hadewijch still provides a fairly substantial plotline to hold onto, until mysticism finally trumps narrative logic in the third act. In contrast, its implications are more than a bit fuzzy.

On a surface level, the Catholic nuns come across relatively rationally and humanely, telling Céline “the convent door will never be barred to you,” but you have to leave for your own well-being. Yet, Dumont seems to suggest a pious Christian is just as likely as a Muslim to become a suicide bomber, even though the very reality posited in Hadewijch hardly lends credence to such a Bill Maher stance. If nothing else though, it offers some insight into how extremists like Nassir so easily manipulate the spiritually hungry and disaffected.

Perfectly cast as Céline/Hadewijch, Julie Sokolowski (in her screen debut) is a picture of waifish innocence, which Dumont fetishizes with his intimate close-ups and not infrequent scenes of ostensibly incidental nudity. Though her challenging character is deliberately cold and distant, Sokolowski manages to project something redeemingly genuine about her. Though Hadewijch features a small cast with few concretely developed figures, Karl Sarafidis also takes a memorable supporting turn, portraying Nassir with appropriately malevolent charisma.

Throughout most of Hadewijch, Dumont clearly appears to critique faith and religious fervor, yet even that take-away is ultimately muddled. As a result, it is devilishly difficult to know what to make of it all. A tangle of contradictory polemics blessed with a shockingly good central performance, Hadewijch opens for the bold tomorrow (12/24) in New York at the IFC Center.