Filmmaker of the border: of inhospitable landscapes
Borders are always strange territories where its inhabitants coexist with neighbors on horseback between their legal identity and their tradition, which does not understand the limits drawn by the squad. Perhaps that is why the director of such outstanding works as the initiatory ‘La Vie de Jesus’, ‘Flandres’ or his recent foray into the ‘P’tit Quinquin’ mini-series format, is so interested in the profile of these border faces, of which the French filmmaker stands out as the leading champion and prominent portrait painter. Nord Pas de Calais, -whose major cities (Lille, Roubaix and Tourcoing) are located in a strange Franco-Flemish territory where although French, the culture of the neighboring country is not foreign-, it is irrevocable setting for most of his works collection. As a curiosity, it is also for ‘Les Fantomes d’Ismael’, which this year opened the French competition in which Dumont presents his new film, and where Mathieu Amalric plays a director who, like that of the film itself, Arnaud Desplechin, comes from Roubaix. In a rural area halfway between inland farms, a non-tourist and somewhat fishing shoreline, and arid terrains not fully exploited for agriculture, Bruno Dumont films in open static shots of large overexposed skies, turning the landscape from predominant outdoors in a perfect setting for the France of Le Pen. It is in this territorial mix of places and people where the French landscaper places his artistic hybridization, a stark and desaturated color cinema, a mixture of crude drama and comedy of ridicule, crime and brutal passion, exposed in the most pictorial way while openly heartbreaking and with an inescapable touch of bitterly ironic humor.Stories of violence, cruelty and submission
