Now Over 5500 Reviews and (near) Daily Updates!

WELCOME! Use the search engines on this site (or your own off-site engine of choice) to gain easy access to the complete MAKSQUIBS Archive; more than 5500 posts and counting. (New posts added every day or so.)

You can check on all our titles by typing the Title, Director, Actor or 'Keyword' you're looking for in the Search Engine of your choice (include the phrase MAKSQUIBS) or just use the BLOGSPOT.com Search Box at the top left corner of the page.

Feel free to place comments directly on any of the film posts and to test your film knowledge with the CONTESTS scattered here & there. (Hey! No Googling allowed. They're pretty easy.)

Send E-mails to MAKSQUIBS@yahoo.com . (Let us know if the TRANSLATE WIDGET works!) Or use the Profile Page or Comments link for contact.

Thanks for stopping by.

Thursday, June 22, 2023

L’HUMANITÉ (1999)

In his second feature, French writer/director Bruno Dumont (imagine if Robert Bresson fathered Les Frères Dardenne) might be looking ahead to his own LI'L QUINQUIN/’14, another rural tale of murder that sets up, then largely ignores, police procedural forms.  Here, the victim is an 11-yr-old girl, brutally raped & killed, left on the side of a bus route road, investigated by a minimally competent local police force.  That’s where we meet Emmanuel Schotté, second detective on the case and almost comically slow on the uptake though oddly thoughtful & insightful once he does work up a response.  With his boss they gather a lot of info that doesn’t lead to much.  But it’s the human quirks of those we meet thru Schotté (a non-pro like everyone in here) that interest Dumont; their humanity if you insist.  Looking like a cross between Alfred Molina and slo-blinking babyface silent film comedian Harry Langdon, Schotté’s profile an art school exercise in unbroken line, he’s either a Saint or a Holy Fool.  Pining for a girl down the block, he tags along, even watches as she & her mec frolic & fuck.  A slow walk of a film, carefully observed without being judgmental, even toward the killer once found.  Dumont taking Renoir’s adage that ‘everyone has their reasons,’ without remembering the first part of the quotation: ‘In this world, the truly terrible thing is that everyone has their reasons.’

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: As mentioned, Dumont gets much further with these ideas in LI'L QUINQUIN.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2017/04/lil-ptit-quinquin-2014.html

No comments: