Flandres

In a grey and uncharming part of France, these farming people live. Life is quiet. You start a relation with the girl in the neighbor house. Life would have remained quiet if it wasn't for war. Or...? There's a shocking contrast here, between the silent life and the brutal battles in Africa. It directly affects also life at home, in an almost as brutal way. Can the things we've done, those wounds, be healed? Maybe they can after all.

A very tense drama, which is sometimes hard to watch. Well acted, and very far from mainstream action, especially when it comes to psychological violence.

Bruno Dumont is back in form here with his fourth release (I found the plot of his previous "Twentynine Palms" to be flawed). Any of you who saw 'The Life of Jesus'('97) and/or 'Humanity'('99) can expect much of the same in terms of style; and to a certain extent, themes as well. This is by no means an easy film to watch (the war scenes, shot in Tunisia, are, at times, just dreadful). And even the storyline which takes place in Flandres, in the north of France (where Dumont is from, and his first two films are set), is full of emotional pain. A very French film, but not of the condescending, intellectual sort, but rather of the realistic, naturalistic, and yes, minimalistic variety. To be seen on the big screen for full effect.

Bruno Dumont seems to create controversy in every one of his films, but I've only seen "Flandres" and "L'Humanite. " Dumont's film language is very bleak and very stark. He uses little to no soundtrack music, letting ambient sound to substitute. His characters seem to writhe in a painfully prosaic film world, their experiences and torments more vivid for the lack of melodrama.

Demeste (Samuel Boidin) and Barbe (Adélaïde Leroux) have a complicated romantic relationship in a rural farming village somewhere in Francophone Europe. Barbe is promiscuous with other men, yet Demeste seems to permit the trysts without comment. You only see his brooding glares. All the young men in the area enlist to go off for war somewhere in an Arab desert. They young soldiers take their emotional baggage with them into this hostile environment. There are fistfights in the camp, firefights in the field, and no one understands the language or mannerisms of the locals. Inevitably, acts of war become acts of war crimes. Seemly normal guys go off to war and become brutal Neanderthals murdering, molesting and bailing. The survivors, like all survivors, are left to try and understand what happened and what they've become.

This film is about a group of young men going off to war. In this far away land, they leave marks to themselves and to the enemies by their lack of morality.

I guess I have to be in a certain mood to enjoy this film. It is highly minimalistic, as it has no soundtrack or extravagant sets. The pacing is extremely slow. It basically features people walking around half the time (and I am very serious), with occasional highly disturbing scenes interspersed in the second half of the film. There is very little dialog in it, and many dramatic scenes are very minimally delivered. For example, the helicopter rescue scene, it could have been made a real drama and thriller but it was so minimal. Flandres could have been a moving tale of morality, but instead tested my endurance.

It's remarkable that this film is not more popular. It successfully strips away the veneer of "civilisation" (false morality, good manners etc) and shows people as selfish, brutal animals, and depicts modern, asymmetrical warfare as a terrible nightmare where a group of brutish white thugs rape and murder a terrified, technologically backward society (nearly all of whom are defenceless/ poorly armed women and children) before finally being made to suffer a grim but deserved humiliation for their actions. Oh, actually, what am I saying? It'll be a bloody surprise if it ever comes out in North America properly, given the hypocritical, righteous atmosphere of self-delusion that currently permeates this society, a society underpinned by exactly the kind of abuse and violence that this film describes.