I don't think I've ever missed watching a film to which I'd bought a ticket. Come rain or snow, I'd be there in front of the cinema, like a pilgrim awaiting religious ecstasy in the darkness of the temple. So it says something about my mindset that on the morning of June 19 I simply couldn't give a fuck... Or maybe I simply forgot that I had a 12.00pm screening of Susan Bier's 'After the Wedding', I'll never know for sure. In any case, after feeling sorry for myself throughout the day for losing 8 bucks (cheap tickets with a multiple pass, but still...) I realised that I'd see the film on DVD in couple of months anyway. Besides, this gave me a lot of time to prepare for a vicious attack from Bruno Dumont at 6.30pm in the evening. I only had a light lunch, just in case...
Dumont is not exactly a household name, but in France, he's a formidable presence, at least in many critic's books. Many of them love him, most of the public loves to hate him, for this is a director seemingly bent on making unlikable films. Sorry, make that utterly detestable.'Flanders' is no different. Set in a farm somewhere in Northern France, the film follows André - a boorish looking young fella - as he works the land and has very awkward meetings with Barbe - his neighbour's daughter and a childhood friend. Barbe is a nymphomaniac and seems to only know how to connect to people through her body. After Andre refuses to acknowledge their relationship, Barbe picks up a new guy in a bar and starts fucking within two minutes of meeting him. Quel Poésie!
'Flanders' then makes a sharp turn into war film territory as André and Barbé's new beau are sent to an unspecified war somewhere in the Middle East. They're in the same regiment and are soon caught in some heavy fighting. If this is starting to sound like 'Pearl Harbour', let me give you this flash forward - somebody gets his balls cut-off in real-time. Meanwhile Barbe has a breakdown and is sent to a mental hospital.
And herein lies Dumont's hardline stance. He does not buy into myths or romantic notions. Hell, the guy even refuses to give us a single, mildly likable character to root for. Everyone's liable for their selfishness and innate cruelty towards fellow human beings. Dumont's anti-war vision is certainly not new, but rarely has it been so bleak, so frankly pessimistic. He posits no allegiances and simply stares passively at the ugliness of the human animal. Stuck in a foreign war, these soldiers have off-loaded their morals at home and they are truly frightening in their blank disregard and brutality. They've become machines. Although treated slightly more sympathetically, the oppressed are not seen to be much different. They just don't have as many guns. The parallel universes of Flanders and the war zone are intercut to emphasise the underlying crisis of human condition in general. We are in a constant state of war Dumont seems to be saying.
Watching this film, I realised with astonishment how most war movies fail to make a truly anti-war statement by indulging in heroism, something that 'Flanders' is completely devoid of. This makes the film into a most discomforting, wrenching experience imaginable, yet at the same time... isn't that what a war is? In a way, the film confounds our own selfishness by making us aware of our desire to be "elated" and "inspired" by cinema - to be lied to. I admire this filmmaker for his integrity even if I invest more in his films than I get back. Dumont's indulgence, his grating superiority and his love for human filth is an obstacle that is hard to surmount. A Dumont film is often like watching a corpse being dissected - humanity reduced to banal, rotting matter. And call me selfish, but I do like to leave the cinema with some spiritual charge rather than making me want to slash my wrists.
Ever since watching his previous two films, I've felt that Dumont's problem is in his inability to provide a closure or leave a door open. Once you step into his inferno, there's no way out. Even Pasolini gave us a feeble hope with the closing shot of 'Salo'. Here (wisely), Dumont makes a tentative move and gives his new film a sense of redemption towards the end, which makes this work his most complete and successful to date and among the best examples of the new cinema of violent chic.
Just in case you're wondering what cinema of 'violent chic' is (you read it here first), think American torture porn ('Hostel', 'Saw') French style. The leading proponents of what I consider to be definitely a new movement akin to the 80's cinema du look, are filmmakers such as Gaspar Noe, Alexander Aja and our topic of discussion - Bruno Dumont. What makes their films so different (and so chic) is the way the violence is orchestrated and who it is directed at. If Eli Roth in his 'Hostel' films tries to push the body horror to the extreme, Noe and Dumont go for irreversible psychological damage (pan intended). Just an example here to clarify their approach. In 'Irreversible' Noe stages an epic 9 minute rape scene. Static camera no cuts. Pure, unfiltered "action" that is as much about our endurance to sustain "looking" as about the Bellucci character surviving. The most disturbing element about this scene is not so much the actual violence, but the framing device the director uses - the moralistic, political, psychological implications of the violator and our implication as a spectator. Dumont stages a very similar rape scene in his highly contentious '29 Palms' (2003), but this time, the victim is a man. It becomes immediately apparent that Dumont's aim is not to out gross jaded sensibilities, but to disrupt moral barriers and send a shock-wave of Foucaldian panic. Sex and violence are above all polemical tools in these filmmakers' hands (another example might be Cathrenie Breillat's 'Romance') who want to draw the dark side of the audience into the open and play a dangerous game of extreme ethical disengagement. Yet, to me, the fire under the unease of watching a film such as 'I Stand Alone' (Noe) or 'Humanite' (Dumont, 1999) is their unrelenting stylishness - the chic of it all. There is a sensory thrill as you watch Noe's mesmerising formalistic experiments even while what he's depicting is a man's head being pulped into a mashed potato. You're violated but at the same time can't help but gasp at the ultra cool of it all. The same goes for the more restrained, dour elegance of Dumont, whose style, ironically is the anthitesis of formalism. What you get is neatly framed, monumental canvases filled with drabness and silence, draped in mystery and dread (Dumont purposefully avoids "pretty" shots). The stylishness here is derived from ambiguity that is very Antonionesque in its semiotics (again, landscape as a language). The viewer is informed from the first frame that he'll be getting a philosophical enquiry rather than entertainment out of the experience. It's a long way off from 'Kill Bill' indeed but I like travelling the distance.
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I could feel the grunt rising inside about two minutes in. Three minutes later I could hold it back no longer.... Uuuuurghhhhhh..... Disappointments are as common in film festivals as revelations are rare. And I purposefully took a chance on the Hong-Kong thriller - 'The Eye in the Sky' - to offset the debilitating effect of Bruno Dumont's 'Flanders'. Dammit, I wanted to be entertained for a change. And there is no other film genre that does it better for me than thrillers. Alas, not this time.
'Eye...' is the feature debut of Nai-Hoi Yau, a writing collaborator of that latest John Woo wanna be - Johnny To. That should've rang some warning bells as To's films are laughable imitations of American gangster films that somehow manage to shoot their through to festivals like Cannes and Venice.
The plot sounded intriguing enough though. A young woman is training to become an SVU, basically a surveillance officer who has to follow and report on suspected criminals without being noticed. Her supervisor is a wise old goose, who takes a chance on the woman because she's too dumb looking to be suspicious. Soon the team is tracking down a highly organised group of jewel thieves, at the head of which is a slippery crim played by the indefatigable Tony Leung Ka Fai (is he like in every Hong Kong movie or what?).
There's much ominous music, much surveillance camera footage, some rudimentary shooting (on a completely empty motorway no less!) and some silly humour Hong Kong style. And then it all disintegrates into a one-note boring cops and robbers chase film with stock characters that might've been ordered from a 'ready to film' catalogue. Awash in bland cinematography, bland performances, some idiotic dialogue and absolute predictability, this is by far the most wasteful film I've seen during the festival.
'Nikita' it aint certainly, but the film ignores also the rudimentary largess of ridiculous pomp that is such a fixture of most Hong Kong action films. By choosing to opt for a subtler approach, where the thrill is derived from psychological cat and mouse games rather than car chases, the director has completely missed the point. He doesn't give us fully-fledged characters who can possibly exist in the real world (we know practically nothing about these people outside of their job) and he takes out most of the action? What is this, a con? That's what I consider a film that fails to deliver on almost every level.
I have never been enamoured of Hong cinema with two very big exceptions - Wong Kar-Wai and John Woo. This film proves that that's exactly they are - exceptions.
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