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Every Dumont film I've seen has resulted in a sweaty fitful sleeplessness with me clutching my bollocks- albeit for slightly different reasons.

This month's Sight and Sound confirms Bruno Dumont's La Vie de Jesus as coming in Summer. So that's 1997 and D ticked off!

FSimeoni wrote:This month's Sight and Sound confirms Bruno Dumont's La Vie de Jesus as coming in Summer. So that's 1997 and D ticked off!

Great news. My favorite Dumont film and the most in need of a better DVD.

In an effort to get PK on another subject I ask, what were your thoughts on Twentynine Palms?

John Cope wrote:In an effort to get PK on another subject I ask, what were your thoughts on Twentynine Palms?

Twentynine Palms is probably one of the most repulsive films of the decade. But what I found most interesting about it is that while it's repulsive, it is also completely fascinating. The picture doesn't have much of a story, mainly its focusing on a sexually-hyped couple(?) who contrast certian levels of strength and weakness, power and vulnerability. I feel director Dumont was examining the thin line between sex and violence between those with control, and those who let themselves be controlled. At certain levels, I came to wonder whether or not Katia (Yekaterina Golubeva) was allowing David (David Wissak) to act with violent notions during their "love making" or if she is completely clueless that what he does is on that level. And I wondered why David would act the way he does, and toward the end be completely vulnerable when everything is turned back on him.

Spoiler

I feel the ending is completely well-executed, as David is the one humiliated in similar ways that he himself would conduct on Katia, while Katia watches in horror, even though she participated in similar brutal ways.

It's the most devestating and raw depiction on the "thin line" than any other film I can remember post-Salo.

So, does anyone have any more news on Hadewijch, or why it wasn't in Cannes? Will it be in Venice?

Seems like Hadewijch will premiere at TIFF

There must be something majorly wrong with it.

I've only seen "Humanite" by this guy, but it was fantastic...

Any other Severine Caneele fans here? She's an astounding actress who crawled out of the woodwork to deliver several amazing, completely ego-less performances, and then she disappeared again. Her work in Lienard's "A Piece of Sky" is 100000x better than her (astonishing) performance in Humanite and is a masterpiece of immersion... or it would be if one had any sense that they were watching an actress on screen. She's simply elemental, a force of nature. I wish she would make more films but maybe cinema is better for only having caught a glimpse of her talents.

colinr, I saw the ending of Humanite as symbolic in the same way that the shot of Pharaon 'floating' in the garden plot was.

... and Hadewijch wins The FIPRESCI Special Presentations Prize at TIFF

Here is an early review from indiewire.

EDIT:Here is another review from Toronto Screen Shots with an audio of the after screening Q&A with Dumont.

Showing at the NY Film Festival in 2 weeks

So, it seems the answer = politics. Equating Islam with terrorism. Plays well in North America but less so across the Atlantic... Still, looking forward to seeing it, Bruno always delivers on some level.

Knowing Bruno, his treatment probably isn't as... obtuse as that.

From those reviews previously linked to, more than being just about Islamic extremism it seems to be suggesting extreme unbending religious devotion of all kinds necessitates violence as people try to turn the hazily theological (and urges of different kinds that feed into it) into the bluntly literal, and on a wider scale build societies and wage war purely around religious principles. A fascinating, and obviously inflammatory, idea even before a trip to Lebanon is added to it.

Trailer without subtitles.

Nothing wrote:So, it seems the answer = politics. Equating Islam with terrorism. Plays well in North America but less so across the Atlantic... Still, looking forward to seeing it, Bruno always delivers on some level.

Hadewijch does exactly the opposite -- it suggests that religious extremism regardless of which religion can lead to terrorism.

FWIW, my favorite Dumont movie so far -- he uses many of the same technics in terms of improvisation, non-actors, etc. from his previous films but Hadewijch is much more subtle and effective.

Ted Todorov wrote:it suggests that religious extremism regardless of which religion can lead to terrorism.

Or that religion leads to terrorism full-stop? Presumably the film, as with all of Dumont's previous work, is somewhat open to interpretation.

Variety wrote:Dumont’s invocation of terrorism in an otherwise peaceable Muslim context will strike some as bold, others as offensive and uninformed.

This should have been in Cannes or Venice and it wasn't. Perhaps you have an alternative explanation?

It was in the San Sebastian selection - easily as prestigious as Venice or Cannes or Berlin selection - and it was honoured with a FIPRESCI prize out of all the titles screening at Toronto, so if you are implying that its nonshowing in the Cannes or Venice selections are a mark of its quality I'd have to disagree with you

When did I say anything about the quality of the film? I haven't seen it yet. But San Sebastian is not a situation that the sales agent and producers would have chosen. There is a history, also, of Dumont's work struggling in this regard. Twentynine Palms was rejected by Cannes but 'rescued' by Venice. Flandres was initially in trouble too, until Dumont removed the original ending.

Nothing wrote:When did I say anything about the quality of the film? I haven't seen it yet.

I thought you had been knocking the movie...now I realize you were just commenting on your perception of the politics, if any, displayed in Hadewijch. In light of the comments here, both pro and con, I'm certainly looking forward to seeing it.

Nothing wrote: Flandres was initially in trouble too, until Dumont removed the original ending.

Anywhere I can read up on this or can you encapsulate in a sentence or two? Thanks

Zazou dans le Metro wrote:Anywhere I can read up on this or can you encapsulate in a sentence or two? Thanks

This may or may not have been covered in the French press at the time, I'm not sure. In the original cut, Demester tortures, rapes and murders Barbe, her parents and everyone else in the village, then himself, in a graphic and extended sequence that supposedly had folks running for the exits, vomiting, etc... It should be noted that Monsieur Dumont now prefers the final cut - which, instead, emphasises "the possibility of love"

Nothing wrote:

Zazou dans le Metro wrote:Anywhere I can read up on this or can you encapsulate in a sentence or two? Thanks

This may or may not have been covered in the French press at the time, I'm not sure. In the original cut, Demester tortures, rapes and murders Barbe, her parents and everyone else in the village, then himself, in a graphic and extended sequence that supposedly had folks running for the exits, vomiting, etc... It should be noted that Monsieur Dumont now prefers the final cut - which, instead, emphasises "the possibility of love"

Wow! Thanks for filling that in. It really sounds like a bit of a retread of what he'd already done on Twentynine Palms that way - seems like a good change (although I wouldn't mind seeing the original, out of morbid curiosity).

When's he gonna get around to making that apocalyptic Hollywood sci-fi spectacle with Tome Cruise or Brad Pitt that he's always talking about making?