France (Bruno Dumont, 2021)

[therewillbeblus]

France

Dumont has always been hit-or-miss for me, but I find myself captivated by his work- even when I don't like the film (i.e. Twentynine Palms)- when he finds a tone and builds layers within it. France might be the most frustrated I've been with the filmmaker, which is ironic considering the film might be his most mainstream and least-"challenging" work to date, precisely because I don't think even Dumont knows what this film is supposed to be. It's a satire, I guess, but it's also striving for sincere melodrama, and also attempting to cultivate a grave allegory for France's sociopolitical disintegration through its lead. I'm very interested in hearing what some of our native-French members have to say about the film, as I admittedly felt lost within the realm of specific political content that I imagine enriches the film's impact for those privy to its cultural markers. Still, I didn't buy Seydoux's regression by any metric of cinematic narrative development, nor did I feel any strength in the relationship between events or relationships or anthropological examinations on a thematic level, so when she delivers what could have been a showstopping monologue at the very end, it felt cheap and unearned. Here's hoping Dumont returns to being weird again in his next feature.

[kubelkind]

Au contraire, I found France to be Dumont's weirdest film to date, of what I've seen. Admittedly I've missed a lot of his recent things as I wasn't into his (deliberately?) unfunny "comedies" and more French films on the well-worn subject of "John Dark" wasn't much of a selling point for me either. But this wasn't just "so straight it's weird", something was seriously, seriously "off" with this from the get-go:

Spoiler

That headslappingly dumb and obvious title, and the "she's called France and it's about France" howler. Ouch.
Equally, the utter obviousness and redundancy of most of the satire. The best example being the "oops accidentally broadcast us making inappropriate comments" moment. Is this hackneyed joke a satire on the satire genre? They say satire is dead, or at least smells funny, but this gag seemed deliberately stale.
Similarly, when it turns to melodrama. Those long close ups of Seydoux, which are held so long they could be referencing Falconetti or Warhol's Screen Tests, but which I also read as possibly a parody of the "three hours of reaction shots" that Blue Is The Warmest Colour tended towards. But who knows?
She lives in what looks like an art gallery or an ambassador's reception suite.
The looped back projections in the driving scenes and the terrible CGI. The ridiculous car crash sequence, looking for all its worth like a very cheap video game.
The monologue at the end which seemed to consist of basic "let's live in the moment" platitudes, a conclusion I found preposterously deflating.

Of course, you could dismiss all this as simply "bad", but Dumont has fished in these waters before (L'Humanite as a "wrong" procedural, Palms as a "wrong" lovers-on-the-run road movie). Dumont is clearly up to something here. Maybe you're right and he doesn't know either, but I'm sure this has been said of his earlier films too (thinking especially of some of the responses to Palms). I must admit, I didn't like this one much but I keep thinking about it.

[DarkImbecile]

As someone who hasn't seen any of Dumont's other work, I had a similar reaction to twbb's for almost the entire film: basically alternating between a) feeling like I was missing the specific targets of Dumont's satire — to the point of not being sure whether or to what degree things were being presented satirically at all, and b) not finding the satire particularly funny or insightful even when I "got" it (as during the dinner event for caricatures of neoliberal elites, or the facile reporting trips to Africa and the Middle East).

The two exceptions:

Spoiler

1) Given the dead silent audience I saw it with, it seemed inappropriate to laugh uproariously at the absurd car crash sequence, but I couldn't fully repress myself. The cartoonish severity of the wreck escalates so relentlessly that by the time the shattered bodies of France's husband and son are consumed by flames at the bottom of the cliff, even an otherwise dissatisfied viewer can't help but be impressed by Dumont's commitment to the bit.

2) The more I think about them after the fact, the funnier the moments in which an otherwise banal or insignificant scene is punctuated by yet another swelling of the emotionally overwrought score become.

Still, it was painfully obvious that my audience (including me) spent long stretches of the film (if not its entire running time) totally unclear about how seriously we should be taking it, or how much we should care about these characters and their situations relative to their formal presentation. Whether that's a function of socio-cultural ignorance or Dumont's disregard for bringing the audience in on the jokes, it's clear to me that this didn't play to an art house audience as intended.

Basically, France functions less successfully as a satirical commentary of French society, media culture, or the Western view of the rest of the world than it does as a mocking criticism of the filmmaking techniques and tropes of the self-serious drama this would be if it were being played straight... but it feels like its the former that receives more space in the screenplay, and commits us to overlong stretches without anything taken seriously or humorously enough to hold on to. Pretty enough to look at, though.

[Never Cursed]

Spoiler

1) Given the dead silent audience I saw it with, it seemed inappropriate to laugh uproariously at the absurd car crash sequence, but I couldn't fully repress myself. The cartoonish severity of the wreck escalates so relentlessly that by the time the shattered bodies of France's husband and son are consumed by flames at the bottom of the cliff, even an otherwise dissatisfied viewer can't help but be impressed by Dumont's commitment to the bit.

Spoiler

I cannot stress enough that I am not saying the following as a brag or contrarian aside by any means, but I really question what the intended takeaway of the car crash scene was no matter the ultimate interpretation. Neither that it's satirical or serious makes any sense to me.

The reason I raise this: I was in the audience for the premiere of this at Cannes, a viewing experience that really helped clue me into what was intended to be serious and what the punchline of a joke, and, in a screening that was frequently interrupted by appreciative laughter from a mostly French group of spectators, the reaction to the car crash sequence was icily serious on a level that completely threw me. Dead silence in the theater except for the music and sound effects, which persisted into the scene at the farmhouse. I actually let out a chuckle at the climactic burst of fire, a little ignorable noise in response to what I took to be a recognizable joke, and the person to my left shushed me (and it wasn't as though I had made any other sound or done anything objectionable during the previous parts of the screening). I bring this up not because I think it's proof of the scene's serious nature or disproof that it's a joke, but because it left me with no earthly idea what the message of the scene was. As you and TWBB so eloquently express, this is the main issue with the entire film: try as one might, there is absolutely no identifiable series of tones or approaches here, or even any compelling reason for the film's focus on media. The friendlier reviews for the film, which frequently hype up the ways in which it skewers the distorted presentation of reality presented by the news or the collusion between the media and evil elites, collectively make me feel like I'm losing my mind. What, because the film is "brave" enough to say that this collusion and distortion exists (oh wow, a journalist is telling her cameraman what to film and is biasing towards things that are more exciting, how shocking), that's the same as insightful commentary on those issues? Obviously the latter director is a lesser talent, but I don't know what separates Dumont's approach here from Adam McKay's similar lib milquetoast superficiality besides the language barrier and a decreased penchant for condescending "explainer" cutaways.

[DarkImbecile]

The response you describe in Cannes to that scene is genuinely baffling, and I can't decide whether Dumont would have been mortified or highly amused at the lack of response.

[Never Cursed]

He took the general response to the film stoically enough, though I don't know what he said when he spoke (video featuring special cameo appearance by me)