L'Humanite
France 1999
Reviewed by Tony Rayns
Synopsis
Our synopses give away the plot in full, including surprise twists.
Bailleul, Flanders. Police lieutenant Pharaon de Winter's car radio summons him to an emergency: local schoolgirl Nadège Smagghe has been found raped and murdered. The town police station is too small (and de Winter's superintendent too incompetent) to cope with the case; the investigation is later taken over by officers from Lille.
Left two years earlier by his partner and their child, de Winter lives with his mother Eliane and dotes on his near-neighbour Domino, a factory worker in a relationship with bus driver Joseph. Aware of de Winter's feelings, Domino frequently invites him to join her and Joseph for dinners and excursions. The jealous de Winter often finds Joseph irritating, while Joseph considers the policeman boring. Eliane asks Domino to keep more distance from her son.
De Winter's enquiries focus on the school bus which dropped off the victim shortly before she was murdered, the Eurostar train which passes close by the crime scene, and the local mental hospital. Suddenly Joseph is arrested and held as the prime suspect. De Winter embraces him in custody and tries to console Domino. Some time later, though, it is de Winter who sits handcuffed in the superintendent's interrogation chair.
Review
Bruno Dumont's follow-up to La Vie de Jésus, his 1996 study of boredom in a small town in northern France, is a virtual remake with an odder protagonist: the same unreadable landscapes, the same off-kilter film grammar, the same spasms of frantic sex, similar lonely and taciturn characters and similar dramatic situations (an adult son living with his irritating mother, a woman who startles her nervous admirer by proffering her vagina). Most of all, L'Humanité reprises the earlier film's quest for humanist warmth in a cold climate, again with secular spiritual implications. This time, of course, the film takes its overall shape and structure from a police investigation into a paedophile murder, but Dumont's indifference to both genre and the nuts and bolts of police procedure erases any narrative tension. The reason Pharaon de Winter is a cop is simply that it gives him a licence to stare at people and things.
Discussion of the film's causes and effects has to start from the unemphatic revelation in the penultimate shot that Pharaon de Winter is the target of his own enquiry - less an Agatha Christie twist than a perverse (or at least idiosyncratic) grace note. The denouement retrospectively makes sense of much of de Winter's eccentric behaviour, from his slowness in responding to the emergency call to his silent cry for help in front of a canvas of a little girl by his ancestor and namesake (a real-life painter of the late 19th/early 20th century) and his reaction to the idea that his 'rival' Joseph, the lover of de Winter's neighbour Domino, could be a scapegoat for the crime. But the first-time viewer, unaware of the burden of guilt on de Winter's back, is presented with one of the most bizarre protagonists in film history: a slow-witted, inarticulate sad-sack whose heightened emotional responses are always printed across his face, a man who confronts the world with a wide-eyed stare but sometimes turns utterly inward, apparently overwhelmed by his own thoughts and impulses. And even when the viewer knows the truth about de Winter, his inner life - and consequently many of his actions - remains unfathomable.
Midway through the film there's a strange scene in the police station. Left alone with an Algerian who admits to dealing drugs, de Winter clasps hold of the man, rubs the back of his head and presses his own face against the man's, nosing his cheek and neck as if trying to assimilate his 'evil'. The Algerian is left near-traumatised when de Winter breaks off and leaves. The only thing clear about the scene is that some kind of moral struggle is going on; whether it's between the two men, within de Winter or out there in the objective world is moot. It's the first concrete intimation of the film's underlying moral drama, although the drama itself remains teasingly abstract.
Thankfully, Dumont seems to realise that the scene could equally be read as an absurdist take on police interrogation techniques. And it later turns out that the scene has another function: it sets up de Winter's final scene with Joseph, which replays the physical action but with some important differences. Joseph has been arrested and is sitting despairing in the superintendent's office; de Winter comes in, expressing incredulity, and gives him the same treatment he gave the Algerian - with the supplement of an extended kiss on the mouth - before dropping Joseph back in the chair. Understandably baffled, Joseph seems to take this as an unexpected homosexual overture. For de Winter, though, it seems more like a benediction-cum-leave-taking, a gesture which at last frees him to approach Domino, whom he dotes on.
There are no more answers here than there were in La Vie de Jésus; it's not even sure whether non-actor Emmanuel Schotté is giving an amazing, fearless performance as de Winter or simply being himself. Dumont amplifies the moral and spiritual questions through an editing syntax which robs the strong and very physical imagery - allotment flowers, human genitals, a sweat-soaked shirt collar - of its expected certainties: fades to black at moments when de Winter's problems are closest to the surface, point-of-view shots which fail to match the perspective of the gazer, cuts which link apparently disparate things. The overall project to construct an intellectual framework around the generally squalid lives of inarticulate working-class folk brings to mind the stance that Lindsay Anderson and his Free Cinema friends adopted in the late 50s and early 60s. But despite its portentous title, L'Humanité knocks films such as This Sporting Life (1963) off the screen. Shot entirely on location with a non-professional cast, it dares to go as far beyond 'realism' as The Matrix.
Credits
- Director
- Bruno Dumont
- Producers
- Jean Bréhat
- Rachid Bouchareb
- Screenplay/Dialogue
- Bruno Dumont
- Director of Photography
- Yves Cape
- Editor
- Guy Lecorne
- Music
- Richard Cuvillier
- ©3B Productions/ARTE France Cinéma
- Production Companies
- 3B Productions/ARTE France Cinéma/CRRAV co-production with CNC/Ministère de la Culture/Canal +
- With the aid of the Région Nord Pas de Calais
- With the support of Procirep/Prix Jean Vigo
- Production Supervisor
- Muriel Merlin
- Unit Production Manager
- Nicolas Picard
- Unit Manager
- Philippe Jacquier
- Assistant Directors
- Xavier Christiaens
- Claude Debonnet
- Yann Olivier Wicht
- Script Supervisor
- Virginie Barbay
- Casting
- Bruno Dumont
- Claude Debonnet
- Steadicam Operator
- Jacques Monge
- Special Effects
- Main Street
- Set Decorator
- Marc Philippe Guerig
- Costume Designer
- Nathalie Raoul
- Key Make-up
- Férouz Zaafour
- Soundtrack
- "Pancrace Royer"
- Sound Engineer
- Pierre Mertens
- Mixer
- Jean Pierre Laforce
- Sound Editor
- Mathilde Muyard
- Sound Effects
- Philippe Penot
- Cast
- Emmanuel Schotté
- Pharaon de Winter
- Séverine Caneele
- Domino
- Philippe Tullier
- Joseph
- Ghislain Ghesquière
- police chief
- Ginette Allègre
- Eliane, Pharaon's mother
- Daniel Leroux
- nurse
- Arnaud Brejon de la Lavergnée
- conservationist
- Daniel Pétillon
- Jean, the cop
- Robert Bunzl
- English cop
- Dominique Pruvost
- angry worker
- Jean Luc Dumont
- CRS
- Diane Gray
- Paul Gray
- British travellers
- Sophie Vercamer
- Murielle Houche
- Pascaline Guyot
- Liliane Facq
- Myriam Dehaine
- workers
- Jean Beulque
- the guide
- Bernard Catrycke
- Nadège's father
- Marthe Vandenberg
- grandmother
- Amanda Goemaere
- Honorine Douche
- children
- Marie Thérèse Cadet
- Denis Claerebout
- parents
- Suzanne Berteloot
- nurse
- Sylvie Perel
- Domino's friend
- Malik Haquem
- the dealer
- Alain Beaufromé
- Pierre-Olivier Thery
- Pharaon's colleagues
- Frédéric Engelaere
- young worker
- Françoise Blavoet
- Chantal Desmettre
- Noëlla Froigné
- Jocelyne Vasseur
- Annie Hennon
- Pierre Raes
- visitors to Fort
- Pierre Harrisson
- man in pyjamas
- Mathieu Daussy
- Gaëlle Coppin
- Marion Robyn
- Laurent Pecqueur
- Sébastion Zanetti
- Cédric Delplace
- Julie Legras
- Grégory Duboz
- Cédric Camberlyn
- Sylvain Backerlandt
- students at brasserie
- Marie Hélène Aernout
- Aline
- Lucien Hallynck
- man wearing béret
- André Geloen
- gardener
- Jean-François Carpentier
- fisherman
- Théophile Boidin
- Jérôme Pollet
- Sébastion Muselet
- bathers
- Géry Laforce
- bus driver
- Franck Lesage
- Micheline Cerouter
- Jacky Hourdouillie
- Marie Thérèse François
- Leslie Benault
- Edwige Benault
- neighbours
- Heidelore Krämer
- Nicole Willier
- Sylvie Verheyde
- Pierre Verheyde
- Famille Janssens
- Régis Maillard
- Monique Laurent
- Philippe Millet
- Patrice Souchet
- Florent Souchet
- passers-by
- Grégory Ryckewaert
- Hamid Bouderja
- museum technicians
- Daniel Braems
- Eric Bailleul
- Guy Volpoet
- Bernard Vanhaecke
- Joël Boulinguez
- J.J. Leurette
- Michel Vanmeenen
- Régis Larridon
- Dominique Deroo
- workers
- Stéphanie Wyts
- barmaid
- Philippe Duriez
- Ivanne Duriez
- Alexis Duriez
- customers
- Noël Debaene
- Jean René Delaval
- Christophe Muys
- Ludovic Cousin
- Jacques Gilliot
- Bernard Marescaux
- Sylvain Boulanger
- Jean Pierre Doise
- Gilles Lelièvre
- police
- Certificate
- 18
- Distributor
- Artificial Eye Film Company
- 13,288 feet
- 147 minutes 39 seconds
- Dolby SRD
- In Colour
- 2.35:1 [Panavision]
- Subtitles