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Pretty Good

This is a tender, generous movie that likes its characters and presents them as real people, full of flaws and strengths.

It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.

Blistering performances.

This movie has as its central character the weirdest copper in the history of film. We observe him more or less constantly for the full 148 mins laconically investigating a murder in the area which his force is responsible for (a small police station in a rural area) and being the gooseberry to the couple who live next door on various excursions (the seaside, a restaurant, etc.). He is always withdrawn and introverted but is he crushed by guilt or merely childlike? Is he obsessed by the couple next door (who seem to be noisily shagging at all hours of the day) or are they just a breakwater for his loneliness? This ambiguity is the films real achievement: De Winter is a tabula rasa on which any prejudice (of the viewer I mean) can be projected. The film certainly is one that either you will love or hate judging by the previous reviews - check out "What the hell is this?", "150 minutes of suffering, only for stubborn art movie fans with a high boredom threshold level" and "Is life really this boring?". I very much enjoyed the film mainly for Emanuelle Schotte who is fascinating to watch as he ambles aimlessly through his character's empty life.

Have you seen L'HUMANITÉ? It's a movie I liked very much. What genre? Broadly, a sensational kinky drama, basically harsh and disconcerting. But its aesthetic allegiance is more important than its genre; those who understand little (or nothing) will call it 'arthouse'. In short now, L'HUMANITÉ is a thoroughly naturalist drama; the naturalist conception in art can be contested, but it has its truth, its meaning and its coherence. And L'HUMANITÉ is a good naturalist drama. Quiet, brutal, slow—paced, exciting and remarkably insightful and well—handled. The objections against L'HUMANITÉ are largely tautological—they don't bring anything that wasn't already known. Also, these objections aren't very interesting. The movie itself is much more interesting than the objections against it. Liking it requires, it's true, a bit of finesse. In a world dominated by Scorsese and Tarantino, L'HUMANITÉ's relative lack of success is natural. L'HUMANITÉ is genuine cinema, interesting as cinema.Next, let's emphasize a few things about L'HUMANITÉ. Obliquely, it's a love movie, strong on the erotica element, a kind of erotica romance. Firstly, the erotica of conjugal love. Domino, the wife, has a vague notion of the conjugal fidelity; she masturbates on the beach when she feels attracted by an unknown guy, she shows Pharaon her crotch and asks him to touch her, etc.. Why the title, why L'HUMANITÉ? Because the movie intends to depict life's texture, what humanity is made of. Again, the naturalist intention.Now further:--there is a naturalism of banality, and a naturalism of brutality and shocking images or scenes. L'HUMANITÉ belongs to the second class, but not exclusively; there are also elements of quotidian existence.The script follows superintendent De Winter's life, his investigation into a case of murder, his family and social life, his sexual perversions (kissing passionately the desperate guys), his interest for a hot blonde broad named Domino, the sex life of this Domino ….In L'HUMANITÉ you can see the superintendent De Winter eating an apple (--an apple so green you almost know he's gonna be unable to swallow that sourness--), riding his bicycle, going out; you can see Domino pissing in the sea.One of the first shots of the flick is a long take of a dead girl's vulva (--she's the victim whose death is investigated by superintendent De Winter--); this sets quite exactly the movie's tone. I thought the actors were well chosen—Pharaon, Joseph, the blonde Domino. They look, like their names, Flemish, Northern; Domino is beastly, instinctual, frank and much like the soil.A principal element of this amazing drama is Pharaon De Winter's physiognomy—he looks like Bregovic's fish—expressionless—impassible, placid, or, if thou will, merely imbecile. You know the Bregovic song, from ARIZONA DREAM? There he defines the fish's physiognomy—expressionless, etc.. His words fit the superintendent De Winter as well.There are also three pretty hot sex scenes (Domino and her husband Joseph), and two shots of Domino's crotch.A word about the cast:--Pharaon De Winter is played by Emmanuel Schotté, Domino by Séverine Caneele, and her husband Joseph by Philippe Tullier.

A trio sit at a restaurant table and stare wordlessly into space. Later, they lean on a rail and stare across the Channel at England. A man works a hoe repetitively in his garden, only his head and upper torso visible on the screen. A man and a woman watch another man peeing against a stone wall. Each of these silent shots lasts for roughly one full minute. Absolutely no information is imparted that could not be given to us in about one quarter of the time. The editor must have been half asleep. I know I was.The movie open with a startling shot of the raw vagina of an obviously dead body. One's gorge rises. But then the policeman (Schotte) exchanges a few words with a neighboring couple and begins to tag along after them and the case is forgotten for the next half hour while Schotte and his friends trade unfunny insults with each other and with strangers. Eventually the thread of the case is picked up again but proceeds slowly, almost aimlessly, following the stylistic pattern already established.Sometimes in movies like this, the location shooting provides a kind of atmosphere that compensates for the dullness of the story, but not here. The houses of the French village are attached to one another in long rows. The house fronts abut the pavement directly, with no steps. The fronts show virtually no decoration and are pretty much indistinguishable. The flat farmlands are featureless. What might have been one of the more interesting episodes -- a visit to a stone fort on the coast -- bores the trio until they begin behaving like snots and are asked to leave.The acting is minimal. Nobody seems particularly anxious to say anything. No jokes are made. Nothing amusing happens. The policeman has a face almost as interesting as Randy Quaid's. The babe, a tall hefty blonde, looks like the kind of shot putter on steroids that the East Germans used to field at the Olympic Games.I sat through more than an hour of it before giving it up. Maybe I'll take a crack at it some other time. Unless I've missed something or unless it turns into some deranged Monty Python routine towards the end, I don't think you'll get much out of renting it.

The previous comments for this film have really disappointed me. I'm admittedly quite out of touch with what's suitable for the masses and what's not (and has resulted in some angry friends having endured two hours of what I guaranteed them they would enjoy), but I cannot for the life of me understand how a film like Kill Bill, which can be summarised in two plot synopsis sentences, can be praised for it's creative plot and innovative style, while this film, a stunning meditation on universal themes and challenging in its methods can be called slow and pointless. How can people expect philosophical themes of existence, morality, and individuality to be fully realised in a fast paced film subverted to the Hollywood method. It simply cannot happen.Revisiting this film, I was most struck by the editing. Which scenes are chosen to fade into another. Connected to this is what Dumont chooses to include in the film at all, and when you think about what the film is dealing with, it is incredibly abstract and precise, not slow and convoluted. Of course we have Dumont's industrial shots, contrasting nature (the garden, serenity) with modern architecture (the building in England, consequently, the scene of a fight in the distance. Dumont is a master paralleler, if he can give away plot details visually and creatively instead of having his characters state it explicitly, he will do it, making the dialogue as pure and distilled as the film itself.This is a hugely important film. Not only for continuing a movement in film that is either perverted (the Dogmes) or wrongfully seen as self-indulgent and pointless, but for separating the chaff of cinephiles.5 out of 5 - Essential