“The Empire” goes beyond good and evil – to the rural regions France

The spring approach in New York means the arrival of French films, whether through the annual Rendez-Vous series with the French movie series in early March, or the release shortly after the films presented there, or the post Oscar for international films for the previous year. Among those in the theaters now, the most accomplished is also the most exotic: the “empire” written by Bruno Domont. Its strangeness is clear in prominent descriptions, to a large extent to threaten her to wander around her distinctive art and her fierce materials.

The “Empire” is located at the present time, in a hunting village on the northern coast of France, where two groups of young people – gratefuls, cabinets and competitors are in two separate powers in a cosmic battle, and zeros. The loyalty section of the Queen (Camille Cottin), which is headquartered in the area associated with the area via the under the sea. The right zeros swore on the evil and its incarnate leader, beelzebub (Fabrice Luchini), whose orders bark from a castle -like castle in the sky above the village. MacGufin in this bilateral conflict is a child named Freddy, known as “Le Margat” – the regional argument of “The Little Little” and is presented in translation in the term “The Wain”. Jony (Brandon vlieghe), WAIN’s father, is a zeros warrior. Rudi (Julian Manir), the current partner of the child’s mother, is a warrior for people – and has a lamp to prove it. As the title and story of the film suggests, “The Empire” suggests no less than a satirical simulation “Star Wars”, which publishes a widespread vague absurdity to glorify local realism in the world of legend.

Despite his futility, “The Empire” is a logical extension of the last DUMont contract or so from filmmaking, which was an extraordinary flow of fictional wonder and observation. The films that preceded this, in the first and half -life of his career in the guidance, were a mainly dramatic and farce, but he radically changed the gears and in 2014, with “Li’l Quinquin”. This film, which was made for television and more than three hours, is located in the same city on the beach in northern France, and although it is the mystery of a murder, it has a strain from the episode it passes, and it is embodied by a pair of X -Strange Purvost and Philippe Jore and strange visions of unfamiliar origin – for example, which is a distinctive cow of the second place in the world. racism. Dumont placed the same characters and settings in a longer supplement, “Clincoin and humans outside humans”, which added another wings: to apply the rise of anti -immigrant hostility in France, foreigners in the extreme sense showed creatures of outer space. In other films of this period, Dumont expanded the legend of the French north, as in “Slack Bay”, which is a comedy in the early twentieth century that includes aristocrats and fishermen, and a wonderful pair of Phantasmagorical Rock-OPERA BIO PICS around Joan of Arc. Meanwhile, in “France”, from 2021, he performed a spelling spelling from Mediascape in the modern era. With “The Empire”, it returns to the terrain “Quinquin” and “Clincoin”. It restores the same slopes among a group of new characters, and pumps extravagance in preparing to reveal the current political light in a legendary form.

In the movie “The Empire”, Dumont starts from the basis of a romantic melodrama, with the opportunity to meet Jony, which comes to the beach in its small boat from the day of hunting, and the calligraphy, which is new in the area and was holding the sun on the coarse beach. Dumont shows a semi -documentary love for Jony’s action routine and for the accumulated scene in the working class neighborhood. But he quickly offers mysterious fillings of rituals: Johnny kneeling towards his infant son, who refers to him with a royal balance; Three local children curve their heads while the line passes; And he wrote, in turn, kneeling to the infant Fredi when spying it through the family window. (“Did you give birth to Wayne?” Johnny, who answers in the voice of a grave, is manipulating the announcement of the presence of “Tenbrous One”.

The ideological struggle that divides the two sides is clearly explained and clearly appears at work. The zeros believes that they are fighting for the survival of their “race”, and as their name suggests, they are nihilists: Jony, the ascends to the palace of the supreme leader, announces, “the supreme nothingness is a crust.” On the contrary, these seek to purify humans of “vulgarity”, “to” improve and raise them “and tend to” higher things “. When Jin dives deep into and entered the sunken cathedral, the Queen is trained in it – in the form of a glowing blue bourb The battle between virtue and power.

However, Jin has its own ideas, Rudi tells that ordinary human beings are neither good nor evil – “Everyone here is a balance between good and evil”, and for this “our battle in their hearts.” However, when the Queen’s ship falls into the village, the forces of goodness reveal its true colors – and the queen, emerging in the city, does this in the form of the mayor. The mayor is guided by the presence of Jin, which he introduces to the locals. It is sincere and good, but its concept of improvement is abstract and not personal. She does not call, and when she meets a woman from the city, she speaks like an exotic space without understanding the practical problems of ordinary people. However, beelzebub is only a homogeneous evil, as it first appeared as a kind of metaphysical pollution-a black ball that resembles oil suspended in the air. To do his mysterious work on the ground, beelzeBub should appear human – and the body of a Nerchini tour guide (Luchini) steals. Once the diabolical spirit is overwhelmed, the guide is converted into a clown, with the Harlekin – Crazy Joker and Dancing Dance Dancing on a Small Voice of Jazz.

In the “empire”, evil is absolute, but goodness can be better. Often, the movie suggests that it was defeated by the righteous. Good needs from better leaders, those who are literally and metaphorically human beings – who do not raise his role, but realize vulgarity as a human condition, and who share instinctively in emotional life and regular problems for people who assume help. Dumont does not lead in the LUCAS -like dialectic, and works on wonders with great work scenes that the effects do not drive. However, wonderfully, is happy in the visions of the natural majesty. “The Empire” is an accurate landscape, with no interior designs at all (except for the wonderful cathedral and palace). As if he was looking with a renewed wonder in life on Earth, Domont is curious about how things look like and how people (and human beings are moving) in their local areas full – green grass, sand, forests, sea, dirt roads, open playgrounds, simple hills, and even the integrated magic in the external market. It inflates the sense of documentary by combining a group of well-known professional actors (Cottin, Luchini, Vartolomei, and KHOUDRI) with non-professional actors and directing them all in the same way-tie with earphones and talking to them as camera lists. Finally, along with his local vision enthusiastically, it provides a classic French solution to comprehensive political exile: sex.