Bruno Dumont's Jeannette, l'enfance de Jeanne d'Arc | Jeannette: The Childhood of Joan of Arc (2017)

As this film is directed by Bruno Dumont, we must of course be prepared for strangeness. This was not filmed in Domrémy, now Domrémy-la-Pucelle in Lorraine, but like so many of Dumont's films this was filmed on the Côte d'Opale. And although this is 1425 and everything is designed to look like we're in the Middle Ages, this musical leads us well away from that period.

Bresson is an obvious influence in this, although (dare I say it?) I was almost reminded of Jacques Demy but with completely non-professional actors in this very odd film. Here we have the early days of Jeanne d'Arc, at first an eight-year-old called Jeannette (Lise Leplat Prudhomme), who begins by singing from Le Mystère de la charité de Jeanne d'Arc (1910) by Charles Péguy, who is a huge influence on this film. Jeanne is worried about the Hundred Years' War, and confused about which position to adopt to it. Her friend Hauviette (Lucile Gauthier) fears that Jeanne will turn strongly towards religion: she is seeking advice from the nun(s) Madame Gervaise (Aline et Élise Charles). Yes, that's two people in one, singing and dancing as one.

But the songs and the dances aren't medieval and there's a lot of head-banging and modern music and in the second part, when Jeanne (Jeanne Voisin) is several years older, her uncle Durand (Nicolas Leclaire) sings rap. But by then she's overcome her doubts and decided to go to Orléans and fight the English. The rest is history, although is that repeating itself in Brexit? I jest, I think.

Bruno Dumont's Ma Loute | Slack Bay (2016)

Ma Loute is a film set at the beginning of the twentieth century. It was released between Dumont's Quinquin and Coincoin, and has surprisingly similar elements, although the appearance of the comfortable family, the Van Peteghems, is a marked difference. This film takes place in the usual Côte d'Opale area in Ambleteuse and Audresselles, although the Van Peteghem holiday home (of which only the exterior of the actual neo-Egyptian Ptolemaic house appears on screen) is a little further north in Wissant: the villa is in fact Le Typhonium.

André (Fabrice Luchini) is the insufferable idiot patriarch of the family, along with his wife Isabelle (Valeria Bruni Tedeschi) and André's cousin Aude (Juliette Binoche). Also present in the area is the Brufort family, who live in a nearby slum, hunt mussels and either carry people over the water or row tourists about for a few pennies.

Ever present are inspector of police Machin (Didier Despres), who is so fat that he frequently falls over and rolls down the sand and has to be stood upright again by his slim assistant Malfoy (Cyril Rigaux): yes, they're of the same ilk as the bumbling cops in Quinquin and Coincoin, and also of course of Laurel and Hardy. They're there to investigate a number of murders that have been committed in the proximity, and of course they'll never discover the obvious: that the Bruforts are killing them to eat.

Add an improbable romance between the transvestite Billy (Ralph) Van Peteghem and young 'Ma Loute' Brufort, finish on a note of Machin floating away like a balloon and you have something that might be expected of the director of Quinquin, but not the director of Dumont's previous Bressonian films. Wonderfully absurd.

Bruno Dumont's Coincoin et les Z'Inhumains : Episode 4 : L'Apocalypse | Coincoin and the Extra-Humans (2018)

The final episode really gets into slapstick gear, with Van der Weyden claiming it's the apocalypse, the end of the world, and finally meeting his 'clown' (= clone, but pronounced 'cloon') and being far from happy with the fact. There appears to be body-snatching and Eve's sister Aurélie (Lisa Hartmann) re-appears as a zombie bearly able to make a sound.

The finale takes place in Coincoin's father's yard, with Van der Weyden facing his 'clown' (or is it the other way round, as all the 'clowns' of course look identical to the original?) and waving a gun. The immigrants enter and hold up their hands, there are a few moments of mock-tension, and it's really the immigrants who save the day by clapping. It's as if the whole village is in the yard, and everyone sings along to the tune of 'Cause I Knew', which Aurélie sang at the church funeral service towards the end of the first episode of P'tit Quinquin. An amazing film which is every bit as absurd as P'tit Quinquin.

Bruno Dumont's Coincoin et les Z'Inhumains : Episode 2 : Les Z'Inhumains | Coincoin and the Extra-Humans (2018)

Coincoin finds another girl, farmgirl Jenny (Alexia Depret), although he's still bitter about losing Eve, telling her that he loves her infinitely and he knows that she feels the same about him too: this seems a strange thing for a such a young person to be saying, especially from such a pugnacious looking character, but I suppose that shows just how prejudiced I am.

And speaking of prejudice, Coincoin is caught flyposting adverts for Le Bloc, a party resembling Marine Le Pen's extreme-wing party Rassemblement National, essentially a renaming of the dreaded Front National. Here Dumont is obviously taking a dig at the working-class Chtis now voting fascist whereas they'd formerly have voted for a socialist party: an indication of what's happening now to France and a number of other European countries. One irony here is that Van der Weyden, far from being a supporter of the immigrants in their bidonville, has previously shown his disdain for them. A second irony is that the immigrants seen much saner, and much more sympathetic, than most of the whites.

Van der Weyden also has to take a dig at the clergymen in a graveyard by mentioning paedophilia. He seems to get his just deserts when a dollop of black gunge falls on his head a few moments later.

And speaking of black gunge, the bizarre Dany Lebleu is the second person to have been cloned, and at the end of this episode Eve gives birth to herself and both of them walk towards Jenny on her harvesting machine.

Bruno Dumont's Coincoin et les Z'Inhumains : Episode 1 : Noir ch'est noir | Coincoin and the Extra-Humans (2018)

After Bruno Dumont's four-part TV series P'tit Quinquin (2014), set on the Côte d'Opale, comes another four-part one in the same area. Now, though, P'tit Quinquin (Alane Delahaye) has grown into adolescence and his former girlfriend Eve (Lucy Caron) has taken up with the tomboyish Corinne (Priscilla Benoist). He's now called Coincoin ('coin-coin' meaning 'quack' as in the duck sound). The series would obviously be missing a great deal if it weren't for the incompetent cops: le commandant Van der Weyden (Bernard Pruvost) is still twitching as much as ever, and his hopeless assistant, he of the wild driving (especially on two wheels) Lieutenant Carpentier (Philippe Jore) add much comedy to an already crazy script: gone, at least for the moment, is the Bressonian Dumont of yore.

And as before, as this is Dumont near his own Chtis territory there is self-derision, a Chtis making fun of the stereotyped Chtis: idiocy, bad driving, weird language, homophobia, racism, etc.

The main difference is it's not murders that are happening but cow shit type lumps are falling from the sky, and scientific evidence discovers that they are not of human or animal origin, if fact they're not of this world. One guy, (Leleu (Christophe Verheeck)), dressed as an eighteenth-century soldier (don't ask why) is the first victim of a snake-like monster that produces a bright light that gets inside the soldier, causing his belly to swell and him to give birth to a clone of himself, dressed in the same clothes. The clone gets in Leueu's car and drives off. Noir ch'est noir, i n'y a plus d'echpoir.

Bruno Dumont's P'tit Quinquin : Episode 3 : L'Diable in Perchonne (2014)

 

Most of this episode is taken up by a celebration session with the cops leading and Eve in uniform. Then racism rears its ugly head when Mohamed Bhiri (Baptiste Anchez) is insulted, but then we come to that in the final episode.

Bruno Dumont's Hors Satan | Outside Satan (2011)

As I mentioned in a recent post, Hors Satan is influenced by Dreyer's Ordet*, although there are many differences: unlike Ordet, Hors Satan is almost entirely set outside; there is very little language and even that – French viewers have complained – is often inaudible because of natural background sounds; there is physical  violence, although little mental violence; no character is named, only a dog.

Le Gars is David Dewaele and La Fille is Alexandra Lemâtre, and the photography of Yves Cape is exceptional. In terms of genesis, the hermit in Dumont's La Vie de Christ was the inspiration: he wanted to make a film about this hermit, although it must be added that Dumont is an atheist. Le Gars sleeps rough in the area to the north of Boulogne-sur-Mer, and le Fort d'Ambleteuse appears in a few of the shots, on one occasion close up.

The fascinating point in this controversial film is that Le Gars can be read as a holy figure, Christ even, or maybe Satan, maybe both. He has a strong platonic relationship with the pale, much younger Goth-type Fille, and although she'd like to make the relationship physical he is opposed to it. At the beginning he kills her sexually abusive stepfather with a rifle which (casually) seems to appear by magic: oddly, the police don't question this odd stranger who is so linked to the murdered father's daughter, but then Le Gars seems to have some kind of (spiritual?) immunity. Later, when La fille mentions that the warden has tried to chat her up, even(!) kissed her, the obviously jealous Gars beats the shit out of him, probably even kills him, but the police don't pay him any mind.

Not only do the wind and the birds make noises, but we hear the breath of any physical action of the characters, including walking around the dunes where Le Gars lives. He not only lives outside time, but outside society, although he's obviously highly respected and cures a young girl, for which his mother thanks him as if he were Christ. For food, he just knocks on doors and is given sandwiches: La Fille even takes in his dirty clothing and hands it back clean. He spends much time praying, looking at the vastness of the ocean and wandering around the dunes with or without La Fille.

There's a fire in one scene, a huge one without any obvious cause. Le Gars walks with La Fille, instructs her to walk on water (in fact on bricks very thinly dividing two small areas of water) and the fire is out. It's a miracle (remember Dreyer)!

There are also noisy human sounds in this film, shouts, shreaks, maybe of torture, maybe of ecstasy, maybe of both. A female hiker asks him the way, he just points without turning to look at her, she joins him, they go through a fence towards the sea, sit down and she produces two beers, puts her arm around his neck and tells him he can fuck her, does he want to? He nods, she strips naked, he remains fully clothed but unzipped and she screams as he fucks her, she foams at the mouth and he kisses her too at the same time as he puts his hand to her throat. Silence. Has he killed her? No, maybe not, as she dives into the water as if she's been reborn again. Later, the police are seen removing a body.

Le Gars is taken away by the police and then released. Then a man neither Le Gars nor La Fille have a liking for is arrested for the murders, his dog (the only being with a name in this film) takes to him, and they both leave the hamlet and walk off to another town. This film is mysterious, inscrutable, exasperating for many, but the meaning can be debated forever: the mark of a truly great film.

*The influence of Robert Bresson is also obvious.

Bruno Dumont's Twentynine Palms (2004)

Bruno Dumont's Twentynine Palms breaks away from his native Bailleul area of France to the west of America, to the eponymous area with its nearby Joshua trees in the desert. David (David Wissak) and Katia (Katia Golubeva) are the only two actors of any importance in the film, which Dumont intended to be experimental – he had no interest in the dialogue, the story or the characters. It concerns a photographer and his girlfriend driving from Los Angeles in a Hummer to a motel in a desert situation. David is American and communicates with Katia in English and in French, only a basic knowledge of which he has: communication is therefore a problem and they have frequent arguments. They also have frequent very noisy and very violent sounding sex in the desert or in the motel or in the swimming pool.

What the viewer sees is the road, the dirt tracks, the gas stations, the naked bodies, etc, and hears a little of two languages and occasional soundtrack. Nothing much happens until towards the end, when a car appears immediately behind the Hummer on a dirt track in a desert in the middle of nowhere. The Hummer pulls off, the car follows it and hits it. David and Katia get out of the Hummer, three men get out of the car, Katie is stripped naked and held but not physically abused in any other way, whereas David is hit several times on the head with a baseball bat and raped noisily by the third man as David looks at Katia and she screams. The men drive off and Katia crawls to David.

Back at the hotel David is still living, doesn't want to call the police, and after Katia insists that she loves him he inexplicably knifes her a number of times, I suppose confirming – definitively – the nature of the love-hate relationship. The last static scene is from a distance, where we see David's body on the ground in the desert and a cop radioing his fellow workers to block the road. From reading reviews I knew a shock was coming so that knowledge reduced the shock, although nothing here is really explicit.

Bruno Dumont's Camille Claudel 1915 (2013)

Bruno Dumont's Camillle Claudel 1915 – as distinct from Bruno Nuytten's 1988 biopic Camille Claudel – concerns just three days in the former sculptor's life. And she's eagerly waiting for her poet and dramatist brother Paul to pay her a visit.

This is a ninety-one minute film, although on the surface not a great deal happens, and the director Robert Bresson was brought strongly to my mind, the long shots dwelling on faces and things. This is very French cinema, a world away from the brash short shots of Hollywood.

It is a painful film, with Juliette being confined by her family to the Montdevergues asylum near Avignon, Vaucluse, well out of the way from anyone close to her, well away from the art by which she can express herself.

Although she cooks for herself because she fears that she'll be poisoned, she is a long way from the apparently hopelessly insane, and is very distanced from them and the sounds they make, although sometimes she can relate to their pain.

Her brother Paul sees her sculpture as her madness, and is himself portrayed as maddened by his religion: the two only meet face to face, in no way mind to mind, but then Camille says so little. A spellbinding film.