Thursday, August 09, 2007

Hedging your bets with bulletproof vests

I've just watched a film called Flandres by Bruno Dumont and aside from making me want to talk French with somebody it made me think of neo-realism and cinéma vérité. It feels very real in terms of lighting, sound and overall atmosphere. There is no music, and I mean no music even on the radio, and we can feel the weather by the light onscreen, the dull overcast grey day or the warmth of soft orange sunlight on a brick porch wall. It begins slowly showing the seemingly almost deserted farm where Demester works. The environment is illustrated with wide shots of him walking across the fields, a feeling of fertile yet empty space. This is embellished by close up details of activities, sharpening a stick to place a snare, washing a bowl in the sink; all this in intricately depicted surroundings, the piles of washing up and junk on the kitchen surfaces, the tools lying outside the farm on the cobbles. It seems like this isn't even set dressing, these are simply real locations as they are. A brief scene in a country pub with a vieillard tentatively playing a note or two on an accordion whilst fags are smoked and doused before going out into the frigid car park feels achingly true. It's also a key moment as it sets up the love triangle between Demester, Barbe and Blondel, a guy she meets in the pub then fucks in his car scant minutes later. In contrast the swift couplings between Demester and Barbe in the corners of fields of grey sticky mud and straw seem tender and loving, albeit without either being able to really express these feelings to each other or even themselves.
The film moves on as the two guys plus a third "friend" Mordacq join the army along with it seems most of the young male population of the area. After the portrayal of the place in which they live it seems almost understandable that they should be eager to escape to another environment. Though eager is perhaps too strong a word, apathy is what pervades the actions and interactions of the people here. Having grown up in the countryside, not as bleak as this however, I can well understand the behaviours of the characters. Barbe's sexual antics for instance are something different than the normal activities of others around, even if not conducted with much vigour. However once one begins a certain practice it is quite easy to fall into the habit of it and so it feels with Barbe, the potential escape has become a trap. Meanwhile the guys are in an unspecified desert conflict zone, Tunisia if you wait til the end credits, that's bleak and beautiful in a similar way to the landscape of Flanders back home, and are put through the wringer in a series of external and self inflicted horrific occurrences that begin almost arbitrarily but possess a definite causality that eventually leads us back to Flanders at the end of the film. As we follow the guys abroad and Barbe back home the cuts between the locations start off long and become quicker approaching the end.
To me the film seemed really to be about Flanders despite the desert combat scenes, this place was not so well realised and seemed to be a stage on which to make comment about arbitrary violence experienced by soldiers. Of course with French soldiers against Arabs there are echoes of Algiers and French colonialism as well as the more recent "war on rational thought" sorry "terror". But the film is shot in Bailleul which is where Dumont was born close the the French/Belgian border and it seems to me he is invoking memories of his childhood in bringing the place to life such is the feel of it as a viewer. However having mentioned neo-realism its worth remembering that its realism not reality. It feels very real but even de Sica made concessions to creating a film rather than a documentary. With this film though I think the pleasure lies not a well structured emotive screenplay but in the accurate evocation of a place that conceals its own beauty beneath a bleak and harsh exterior. The flicker of dying embers against a dusk sky, the flurry of birds in the hedgerow, the icy cold of winter giving way to the treacle sunlight of spring.

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