Hors Satan
Directed and written by Bruno Dumont
January 18-27, 2013
Nana
Directed and written by Valerie Massadian
January 25-January 31, 2013
Anthology Film Archives
32 Second Avenue, New York, NY
anthologyfilmarchives.org
Two dramatically economical French
films have their New York premieres at Anthology Film Archives: provocateur
extraordinaire Bruno Dumont’s latest, Hors Satan; and writer-director Valerie
Massadian’s debut feature, Nana.
 |
| Bruno Dumont's Hors Satan |
Dumont has made a career of
making alternately hypnotic and infuriating dramas about individuals approaching
states of grace in their singular ways; in that sense, he’s a legitimate
successor to Robert Bresson. Dumont’s best films—Ma Vie de Jesus, Humanite, Hadewijch—find specific locales and
situations in which to play out his dissections of spiritual malaise, while his
unsuccessful films—Twenty-nine Palms,
Flanders, now Hors Satan—find themselves
between the Scylla of dime-store psychology and the Charybdis of absurdity.
Satan plays like a straight-faced parody of a Dumont film: I’d say
it’s self-parody but Dumont seems incapable of humor. Set in the rough-hewn
seaside of northern France—the magnificent, captivating Cinemascope photography
is by Yves Cape—the movie follows The Guy (David Dewaele), a mysterious stranger, and The Girl (Alexandre
Lematre), who follows him around the countryside as he arbitrarily
alternates between Good and Evil: he both heals and kills. He also meets a
hitchhiker, with whom—in the most unsettling sequence in a movie filled with
them—he has a weird sexual encounter.
Dumont might be saying that The
Guy is The Girl’s guardian angel—but then again, he might not. Even in his bizarro-world
moments, however—and Hors Satan is packed
with them—Dumont makes movies that provoke responses. Despite this confused and
inscrutable jumble, one looks forward to his next move: a biography of sculptor
Camille Claudel with Juliette Binoche.
 |
| Lecomte in Massadian's Nana |
Nana is set on a rural French farm, where a grandfather, his
daughter and her young daughter Nana live their everyday existence. For 68
minutes, we watch the goings-on in their lives: a pig is slaughtered, granddad
and Nana play with piglets in a barn (she presciently calls them “little roasts”),
daughter gathers sticks for firewood and later reads a bedtime story to Nana.
Then one day, Mommy is gone and Nana is suddenly alone: and nothing much is made
of it.
The young girl—survival instincts
already firmly in hand—very matter of factly goes about her own business of
changing her clothes, starting a fire, bringing home a captured rabbit (she
watched her grandfather set the trap in the nearby woods), having milk and
cookies, and reading to herself. Red flags go off when she curses like a
trucker while re-reading a story her mother earlier read sans expletives: could
the swear words she tosses off be her simply parroting exchanges she heard
between the adults in her life? The director tantalizingly never obliges us
with an explanation.
Massadian’s visual and narrative rhythms
are impeccable—the lustrous camerawork comprises long, static, confident takes.
But Nana is mainly memorable for the appearance
of little Kelyna Lecomte, with whom the director worked for nearly two years: with
a lot of improvisation, the barebones of a script giving an broad outline of the
story. Young Lecomte responds with a miraculous performance that is less acting
than simply existing: and she’s riveting throughout this remarkably honest and stark
portrayal of a young girl in a violent and difficult world.
No comments:
Post a Comment