La Vie de Jésus

Each scene of this film grabs you. You want to *see* what is happening. As in Dumont's other film "L'Humanite", he has an intuitive grasp of what the viewer wants to see, where the human eye would naturally want to look. He is also a sensitive observer who understands human behavior in all its richness. Even though the main characters of his films are lowlives who we would probably not have much in common with, we appreciate them as human beings. He never makes fun of or degrades his characters. I disagree with the reviewer who said there is no development. I think there is a tremendous amount of development, but unlike a Hollywood film, he does not announce it with a surging musical score, a change in lighting, and other such cheap tricks. Instead, we observe a character moving beyond the grief of his brother's death when he bites off the knot of a mourning cloth he tied to his wrist. This is a great film by a great director.

There is enormous promise in the opening scenes of Bruno Dumont's first feature "La Vie de Jesus". He is clearly a director with a great feeling for landscape, that ability to draw the viewer into a self-contained world, in this case an agricultural area of Northern France. Within minutes we know what it is like to live in this small redbrick town bounded by seemingly endless lanes and fields where very little happens and even the local cafe is all but deserted on a weekday mid-afternoon. We share the stifling boredom of the group of unemployed youths with little do except joyride their mopeds. We are in a world akin to that of Bresson's "Au Hazard Balthazar" and "Mouchettte" with Dumont revealing his with the assured unflinching vision of the master himself. Already we are beginning to sense the thrill that comes with the intuition that we may be discovering a major new talent. A brilliantly observed scene where the group of friends visit the brother of one of them who is in a coma dying of AIDS seems to confirm this. Words cannot convey their feeling but expressions say everything. However after this doubts gradually creep in. It requires real genius to sustain viewer interest in a film about provincial ennui. Not that nothing happens. There is an attack on an Arab youth that results in manslaughter, an arrest and an escape. The problem is not a lack of psychological development. There is an inevitability about the main protagonist, Freddy's obsession with the only girl around and his gunning for the Arab as a result of sexual rivalry fuelled by group racism. Rather is the problem one of a lack of narrative development. One sequence of moped riding becomes just like any other as do all those scenes of young people just moping around. Unfortunately the film eventually evokes viewer tedium in a way that is self defeating. Nevertheless there is excitement in the discovery of a new directorial talent and the prediction that he could in time make a really outstanding film.

This movie was one of my first contacts with french cinema. Later I saw a bunch more, but this one stays one of the best. It gives a somewhat scary insight in the rural parts of France. It shows a group of young boys that have definitely suffered from heavy inbreed. They are miserable machos wih an attitude. It shows a young generation with few hopes but the cheap thrills and the fast kicks. The tone of the story could be compared with 'Gummo'. The style of the movie is obviously not comparable with Gummo, since nothing is comparable in style with Gummo. But, returning to la vie de jesus, It is a beautiful movie wich leaves you with a strangely uncomfortable feeling. If you have the chance, go see it. The only thing that I really can't place it the very explicit shot somewhere in the middle of the movie.

La Vie de Jesus, a film by Bruno Dumont, is an unconventional look at marginal young people living in Bailleul in northern France. They spend their time without much purpose, riding around the drab Flanders town on motorbikes or playing in a marching band. From the opening of the film, I could sense that I was in the hands of a director with unique talent. One of Dumont's greatest strengths is his uncanny ability to capture the sense of emptiness of the town and the people who inhabit it. With little dialogue and no musical score other than the sounds of nature to break the stillness, we are forced to relate to the characters by observing their eyes, their physical movements, and the facial expressions that reveal an inner sadness.

In La Vie de Jesus, unemployed, uneducated, and epileptic 20-year old Freddy (David Douche) lives with his mother Yvette (Genevieve Cottreel), a café owner. Douche gives a haunting performance as the sensitive but not very bright Freddy, his body scarred from repeated falls from his motorcycle and his face mirroring the fear of not knowing when his next epileptic seizure will come. Freddy has a girl friend, Marie (Marjorie Cottreel), who works as a cashier at the supermarket but their relationship lacks an emotional pull and their graphically depicted sex feels mechanical. Dumont does not judge his characters and they are fully three-dimensional, both guilty and innocent, displaying tenderness one minute and cruelty the next, searching for human connection. Freddy trains his finch to sing and takes the boy who just lost his brother to the beach to cheer him up, yet shortly afterwards he and his friends humiliate an overweight girl who plays in the band.

One of the most moving scenes takes place at a hospital where the friends stand around a hospital bed watching one of the boys' brother who is dying of Aids. On the wall there is a picture of Jesus described as "about a guy who comes back to life". They do not talk but wait and watch silently and we wait with them as if expecting momentary redemption. Freddy and his friends are not "bad" people but each one is tightly wound, looking for a reason to explode and the film seethes with tension. When a young Arab boy Kader (Kader Chaatouf) foolishly tempts fate by making a play for Marie, the underlying racism of the society transforms an ordinary love story into a tragedy of transcendent power.

With this first movie, the filmmaker Bruno Dumont signs a work of talent and establishes himself as a real author. It is all the more extraordinary as he never studied cinema and he doesn't belong to any film school. It doesn't prevent his movie from being reminiscent of the Dardenne brothers' cinema in its treatment: few dialogs, nearly no music, Dumont doesn't judge or criticize his characters. Neither does he judge their actions, doings and he doesn't condemn the murder of the Arab teenager. Nevertheless, Dumont has got a quality he constantly uses throughout his movie: a wide sense of observation. And sometimes, he lets express his sense of suggestion. In another hand, Dumont may be a genuine filmmaker, be that as it may, he's got a common point with Robert Bresson another French filmmaker: he hires no professional actors. We can take this characteristic for another asset in "life of Jesus" because it gives more strength and neutrality to this movie.

The title of my review is extracted from a song by Steve Albini's former band Big Black: "Kerosene" in which this "enfant terrible" screams: "never anything to do in this town!". It's exactly the same thing in the film. During nearly one hour, nothing is happening. We only see Freddy and his mates wandering again and again in the little town of Bailleul and its surroundings given they are on the dole. I have previously written that Dumont's opus contained few dialogs. Dialogs are almost useless here. Freddy's countenance and his pals' are sufficient enough to communicate the spectator their boredom. There are a few moments of happiness: every Sunday they play in the municipal brass band or they are going by the sea. Furthermore, Freddy takes part in competitions of chaffinch singing. But these short moments of happiness don't change anything in their lives and don't bring them hope. In another extent, when Freddy has sex with Marie, their sexual relations are very primary. It is also interesting to notice that to emphasize their humdrum life, the director uses a recurrent shot that regularly comes back throughout the film like a sort of leitmotiv: a rural or urban landscape with the gang in the middle distance or in the background. Then, gradually, this dull life turns to drama with two dramatic events: Freddy's gang rapes a young girl and they kill an Arab teenager. What shocks is the quasi-indifference of the gang. How did they arrive there? We can put forward several explanations. I will retain this one: maybe constant boredom destroys any judgment and makes the gang narrow-minded enough to lead them to commit a murder.

Bruno Dumont also achieved a tour de force in the cast. All right, the actors are no professional but they reveal themselves highly convincing. With Freddy's gang, the director draws a gallery of listless or racist characters deeply rooted in their land of the North of France. Of all these characters, we could argue that Marie is eventually the sole positive one since she doesn't want to meet the gang again (and especially Freddy) after the rape of the young girl and she accepts the friendship of the Arab teenager, Kader (let's admit it not for very long). As for Freddy, he is a simple-minded but not really clever person. Moreover, Dumont lets us suggest his easily influenced side, particularly in the scene when they rape the young girl. His friends encourage him to act.

At last, this movie contains a particularly harrowing sequence: when the gang visits one close relative of them who's dying of AIDS.

One last thing and I will finish with it: why did Bruno Dumont give his movie a title in which there's no question of Jesus? It is a mystery but it doesn't spoil the strength of this perfectly mastered movie.