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