Playing his signature brand of rural French absurdity in stark counterpoint to the grandiose strains of a space opera, Bruno Dumont returns with The Empire: his Barbarella bourguignon, his dijionnaise Dune. The Empire is the story of two warring factions: one whose mothership resembles the palace of Versailles; the other’s as if someone glued together two Notre Dames, crypt to crypt. It follows their envoys on earth, now in human form and attempting to capture a toddler who they believe to be the Chosen One––whose mere presence makes them bow down like bodies in rigor mortis. There are blasé beheadings with lightsabers, a group of men on Boulonnais horses who call themselves the Knights of Wain, and, for no apparent reason, the commandant (Bernard Pruvost) and lieutenant (Philippe Jore) from P’tit Quinquin.
If that all sounds like a mixed bag it’s probably because The Empire is...
If that all sounds like a mixed bag it’s probably because The Empire is...
- 2/19/2024
- by Rory O'Connor
- The Film Stage
It is increasingly weird to recall that for a while, French director Bruno Dumont was the kind of filmmaker who reminded you, often forcibly and somewhat against your will, that the word “auteur” contains most of the letters of “austere.” “The Empire,” another of the director’s proudly off-kilter comedies that pitches the bumbling denizens of a small French village into a vast, sinister conspiracy extending far beyond their foreshortened horizons, hovers several light years — and two janky light sabers — away from austerity. Unfortunately, though, the air out there is also a little thin on hilarity, with the film’s one-gag setup becoming stretched to the point that it doesn’t even matter that it’s a pretty good gag.
The humor, as ever with the Dumont of “Li’l Quinquin” and “Slack Bay,” derives largely from the collision of the grandiose with the drolly mundane. This time out, harking back to,...
The humor, as ever with the Dumont of “Li’l Quinquin” and “Slack Bay,” derives largely from the collision of the grandiose with the drolly mundane. This time out, harking back to,...
- 2/18/2024
- by Jessica Kiang
- Variety Film + TV
A film project that originally had (at different junctures) the likes of Virginie Efira, Lily-Rose Depp and Adèle Haenel had a change of fleet with Camille Cottin, Anamaria Vartolomei and finally Lyna Khoudri coming aboard. The Cineuropa folks have confirmed that Julien Manier and the Li’l Quinquin tandem Bernard Pruvost and Philippe Jore have also joined the Bruno Dumont‘s L’Empire – a three month (in sections) production that began last week until beginning of September on the Opal Coast that will then move into Brussels, then Caserte, and Berlin in November. Tessalit Productions’ Jean Bréhat and Bertrand Faivre are producing.…...
- 8/24/2022
- by Eric Lavallée
- IONCINEMA.com
Mainstream cinema conveniently assumes that humanity will unify in the face of otherworldly calamities like an alien invasion or zombie apocalypse. By doing so, popcorn entertainment allows audiences to defiantly believe that they would also act nobly and courageous once the sky starts falling. Because who wants to watch a version of Independence Day where Will Smith’s heroic fighter pilot philosophically second guesses himself while murderous extra-terrestrials run rough shod over America? Possibly Bruno Dumont. The great French auteur feels no such allegiances to Hollywood’s delusional fantasies. Like Jacques Tati, he actually wants to subvert their traditional narrative constructs using brazen comedic timing and densely packed mise-en-scène. Look no further than CoinCoin and the Extra-Humans, which revels in the absurdity of our collective inertia. For 3+ hours it shows why glamorizing mankind’s response to global chaos remains an utterly ridiculous endeavor. Far more so than even the bumbling,...
- 6/14/2019
- MUBI
CoinCoin, formerly known as Li’l Quinquin in Bruno Dumont’s film of the same title, is back in CoinCoin and the Extra-Humans (CoinCoin et les Z’inhumains). His name change, like the various physical and learning disabilities of the actors playing citizens of Dumont’s native Côte d’Opale, goes unexplained. It’s simply part of the story. If you’ve seen Li’l Quinquin, you know details like gendarme Van Der Weyden’s (Bernard Pruvost) Tourettes-twitching is constant, used for comedic effect, and as Dumont told the Guardian, “You have to decide whether or not you’re looking at something that disturbs you.”
Like Li’l Quinquin, CoinCoin was made for Franco-German network Arte. Both were broken into four parts for television but screened as one film at festivals. CoinCoin stands alone in many ways, but to understand the last thirty, delightful minutes of the story, you’ll need to see Quinquin first.
Like Li’l Quinquin, CoinCoin was made for Franco-German network Arte. Both were broken into four parts for television but screened as one film at festivals. CoinCoin stands alone in many ways, but to understand the last thirty, delightful minutes of the story, you’ll need to see Quinquin first.
- 3/2/2019
- by The Film Stage
- The Film Stage
Bruno Dumont – the French auteur director of acclaimed films Ma Loute, Hors Satan, Flandres, L’Humanite, La Vie De Jésus, and Jeannette, l’enfance de Jeanne d’Arc – is no stranger to the Cannes Film Festival, as each of the aforementioned films have premiered there. It’s no surprise then that the festival made an exception to their strict set of prestigious guidelines and premiered Dumont’s 4-episode television mini-series Li’l Quinquin as a 210-minute epic in 2014.
The series, while being as provocative and relentlessly singular as the rest of Dumont’s body of work, was well-received, even topping Cahiers du cinéma’s best of the year list. In February of last year, news broke that Dumont was developing a second season, and now we finally have a teaser trailer.
Titled Coincoin and the Extra-Humans, the second season will center on Coincoin and two cops (Bernard Pruvost and Philippe Jore...
The series, while being as provocative and relentlessly singular as the rest of Dumont’s body of work, was well-received, even topping Cahiers du cinéma’s best of the year list. In February of last year, news broke that Dumont was developing a second season, and now we finally have a teaser trailer.
Titled Coincoin and the Extra-Humans, the second season will center on Coincoin and two cops (Bernard Pruvost and Philippe Jore...
- 5/24/2018
- by The Film Stage
- The Film Stage
French director Bruno Dumont’s forensic-thriller farce features one of the funniest and weirdest scenes of the year
You can keep your Scandi noir. What about northern French forensic-thriller farce? This is the latest film from that quite extraordinary French director, Bruno Dumont. He has decided to vacate his creative heartland of fierce social realism in favour of acid black comedy – an epic designed originally to be shown on TV in four 50-minute parts – starring Bernard Pruvost and Philippe Jore as Van Der Weyden and Carpentier, two incompetent rural cops on the trail of a serial killer who leaves body parts inside barnyard animals.
Continue reading...
You can keep your Scandi noir. What about northern French forensic-thriller farce? This is the latest film from that quite extraordinary French director, Bruno Dumont. He has decided to vacate his creative heartland of fierce social realism in favour of acid black comedy – an epic designed originally to be shown on TV in four 50-minute parts – starring Bernard Pruvost and Philippe Jore as Van Der Weyden and Carpentier, two incompetent rural cops on the trail of a serial killer who leaves body parts inside barnyard animals.
Continue reading...
- 7/9/2015
- by Peter Bradshaw
- The Guardian - Film News
Life of Quinquin: Dumont’s Foray into Miniseries Format Filled with His Brand of Peculiar Humor
Provocative auteur Bruno Dumont lets loose his comedic side with a four part miniseries, Li’l Quinquin, shown as one long piece at the Cannes Film Festival. While it apparently will be released in English speaking territories in the same fashion, its purposeful structure does make it seem better served to be viewed in more than one sitting, where its bizarre weirdness has a better chance of really sinking in. But one has to remember that we’re talking about Dumont here, the director who grapples with existential ennui usually through the lens of religious discord or the bleak isolation of rural settings. So the project is indeed the most comedic offering of the director’s oeuvre, following last year’s captivating look at sculptor Camille Claudel starring Juliette Binoche. Yet it’s not...
Provocative auteur Bruno Dumont lets loose his comedic side with a four part miniseries, Li’l Quinquin, shown as one long piece at the Cannes Film Festival. While it apparently will be released in English speaking territories in the same fashion, its purposeful structure does make it seem better served to be viewed in more than one sitting, where its bizarre weirdness has a better chance of really sinking in. But one has to remember that we’re talking about Dumont here, the director who grapples with existential ennui usually through the lens of religious discord or the bleak isolation of rural settings. So the project is indeed the most comedic offering of the director’s oeuvre, following last year’s captivating look at sculptor Camille Claudel starring Juliette Binoche. Yet it’s not...
- 1/1/2015
- by Nicholas Bell
- IONCINEMA.com
Who would have guessed that Bruno Dumont, the divisive French filmmaker best known for oblique, rurally set dramas (including 1999's Humanité and 2006's Flanders, both Grand Prix winners at Cannes), would draw renewed vigor from the loose aesthetic of serial television? Li'l Quinquin, which aired in France as a four-part miniseries, exploits the average TV viewer's familiarity with one-off jokes and untied loose ends, and turns out something rare and rewarding: a Dumont film that paints its small-town milieu with as much humor as violence (though there's a fair dose of that, too) and finds some tenderness in life's absurdities. Li'l Quinquin follows two cartoonish detectives, the wiry, efficient Lieutenant Carpentier (Philippe Jore) a...
- 12/31/2014
- Village Voice
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