Plot
In a village on the French Opal Coast, a drifter engages in a perplexing relationship with a young woman who has suffered abuse.
Release Year: 2011
Rating: 6.4/10 (676 voted)
Critic's Score: 63/100
Director:
Bruno Dumont
Stars: David Dewaele, Alexandra Lemâtre, Christophe Bon
Storyline In a village on the French Opal Coast, a drifter engages in a perplexing relationship with a young woman who has suffered abuse.
Cast: David Dewaele
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Le gars
Alexandra Lemâtre
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Elle
Christophe Bon
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Le garde
Juliette Bacquet
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La gamine
Aurore Broutin
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La routarde
Sonia Barthélémy
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La mère de la gamine
Valérie Mestdagh
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La mère
Dominique Caffier
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L'homme au chien
Filming Locations: Ambleteuse, Pas-de-Calais, France
Opening Weekend: €590
(Portugal)
(22 July 2012)
(1 Screen)
Technical Specs
Runtime:
User Review
Puzzling and excruciatingly slow
Rating: 6/10
Set in the Côte d'Opale region of Southern France close to a river and
marshland, an enigmatic loner referred to only as "The Guy" (David
Dewaele) stays alive by poaching and building fires. A girl from a
nearby hamlet also unnamed and known as "The Girl" (Alexandra Lematre)
is drawn to him, feeds him, and provides companionship and they go on
long walks together. Controversial French director Bruno Dumont's
latest film, Hors Satan, is a puzzling, excruciatingly slow, meditation
on the nature of good and evil and whether Christ and Satan could be
two sides of the same coin. As the film opens, The Guy and The Girl
meditate together in the open fields and pray together at the edge of
the ponds, though it is not clear to whom they are praying.
There is no physical relationship, though The Girl seems to want it.
There is little dialogue and the only sounds we hear are the ambient
sounds of nature. The Girl follows The Guy without question and doesn't
raise an eyebrow when he kills her stepfather whom she claims is
tormenting her. "He won't ever bother you again," he says. The police
investigate but no one is arrested and the couple remains emotionally
detached from what is going on. The Guy's actions are morally
ambiguous. Presumably to enhance their redemption, he clubs animals to
death and severely beats a guard (Christophe Bon) who wants to get
close to The Girl.
He is also a healer, however, as demonstrated when he restores a
catatonic girl to life, but a grotesque sex scene with a camper borders
on the unwatchable and raises more troubling questions about who he
really is. While no meaning is attached to events, the film appears to
be saying that good and evil are not mutually exclusive, that one can
contain the other but its meaning seems muddled. The Guy may be Christ
who has returned as a lion rather than a lamb, or then again, he may be
Satan, or a combination of the two. Dumont's premise follows the tenets
of religious orthodoxy postulating the existence of the Devil, but what
he really seems to be asking is whether or not the end ever justifies
the means.
In other words, does it matter what kind of methods you use if a
desirable result is achieved? Apparently The Guy does not think it
does. While Hors Satan contains many biblical allusions such as
walking-on-water and resurrection and speaks the language of
metaphysics, the film is hardly a spiritual experience. In Carl
Dreyer's Ordet and Carlos Reygadas' Silent Light take on similar
material, there is beauty, poetry, and humanity, significantly absent
in this often violent film. Dumont once told an interviewer that "you
don't have to be civilized in the movies, only when you come out of the
theater," and said that "to be civilized you have to have the
experience of barbarism."
Although the film falls short of barbarism,it is mostly an unpleasant
experience with scenes of in-your-face ugliness, and I didn't feel any
more civilized when I came out. Dumont says that his films are a slap
in the face to get the audience to wake up. While this is a commendable
goal, judging from the response of the sparse audience in the showing I
attended where half of the audience walked out and the other half fell
asleep, it seems as if the viewers may have failed to get the message.
Dumont once said, "I'm not indifferent to the public. I will end up
being a filmmaker for big audiences, I may be 70 by that time, but I
will get there." If Hors Satan is any indication, he may get there, but
it won't be in this lifetime.
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