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CAPSULE: THE EMPIRE (2024)

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L’empire

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DIRECTED BY:

FEATURING: Anamaria Vartolomei, Brandon Vlieghe, Lyna Khoudri, Julien Manier, , Camille Cottin

PLOT: Rival races of aliens, the Ones and the Zeroes, possess humans in a small French town.

Still from The Empire (2024)

COMMENTS: The Empire is an epic pitched in a very odd and minor key, and we expect nothing less from Bruno Dumont. It’s best described as a deadpan satire where alien factions battle for the fate of earth, but spend more time scouting, strategizing, swimming, and sleeping around than fighting each other. Why aliens chose a sunny and sleepy fishing town in northern France for the site of Armageddon is anyone’s guess—and maybe an essential part of the joke.

Much of what plot there is seems arbitrary and almost beside-the-point; in fact, it’s not entirely clear what the point is. The aliens possess villagers at random. The evil Zeroes have a prophetic Antichrist-like baby of destiny, but the good guy Ones don’t have much of a coherent plan to deal with it. They decapitate someone, maybe as a warning? An abduction resolves in an easily thwarted anticlimax. Mostly, the two teams cast sideways looks at each other when they pass in town, and take time out to confer with their respective leaders: La Reine for the Ones, who hovers in a cathedral spaceship complete with stained glass windows, and Belzébuth for the Zeroes, orbiting Earth in a craft that looks more like the palace of Versailles. The Empire‘s most fabulous character, Belzébuth dresses in a puffy white suit with a black bow tie, and is something like a cross between Evil from Time Bandits and a depraved Pee Wee Herman. Fans of Lil’ Quinquin‘s Captain Van der Weyden and Lieutenant Carpentier will be frustrated; the comic gendarmes put in a couple appearances, and Dumont teases that we may follow their investigation into the decapitation, but they actually play no role in the plot. (I’m a bit concerned about ‘s health—Van der Weyden barely mumbles one line here.)

The Empire is loosely a parody of science fiction epics—Jane and Rudy even wield (slightly modified) lightsabers—but it’s far from Spaceballs 2. If there’s a satirical target here, it’s the simplistic Manicheanism of humanity (and humanity’s blockbuster movies) . Despite their grand pretensions, the great cosmic struggle between the Ones and Zeroes is constantly subsumed into the minutiae of daily provincial life. Carnal attraction crosses battle lines. And the final showdown between the forces of good and evil is cheekily subverted, to say the least—as if both sides had been wasting their time all along.

The premise has a mildly amusing level of base absurdity, but the film is virtually free of laugh-out-loud moments. Fabrice Luchini’s clownish prince of evil amuses as he watches black blobs twerking, and a scene or two with Carpentier supplies possible chuckles. Still, the movie is well-shot and scored, the architecturally-minded spaceships are unique, and there are points of visual interest (and I’m not just referring to Vartolomei and Khoudri, who both have nude scenes and who are both stunning). It’s tempting to dub this The Empire Strikes Out. But although the mock-epic is a bit underwhelming, if considered as another thread in the tapestry of the expanding paranormal North of France Dumontverse, it’s scenic enough to make it worth a visit for the director’s fans.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“…a bizarre yet movingly humane satire that exposes the philosophical deficiencies of the movie genre that dominates global film culture… In Dumont’s eccentric way, The Empire forces the sci-fi genre to represent Western culture’s deepest mysteries. It’s like a Classic Comics version of a Robert Bresson movie with Spaceballs thrown in — a manifesto opposing the most corrupt and childish film genre.”–Armond White, National Review (contemporaneous)

The Empire [Blu-ray]

The Empire [Blu-ray]
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Capsules, It Came from the Reader-Suggested Queue

IT CAME FROM THE READER-SUGGESTED QUEUE: SUBWAY (1985)

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DIRECTED BY: Luc Besson

FEATURING: Isabelle Adjani, , , Michel Galabru, Jean-Hugues Anglade, Jean Reno

PLOT: Fred, a free-spirited thief, absconds with valuable papers belonging to Héléna, the kept wife of a powerful criminal, and escapes into the underground world of the Paris Métro, where he enlists the help of an entire community living off the grid.

COMMENTS: Subway gets started with a truly satisfying kick. We meet Fred in media res, tuxedo-clad and barreling down a Parisian highway in a cheap car with a load of similarly attired muscle in hot pursuit. But he even knows that the chase doesn’t really begin until he’s got the proper music, and so he ignores the impending threat just long enough to give him the chance to slam in a cassette tape and queue up Eric Serra’s punchy synth-funk beat. Once that roars in, we’ve got ourselves a bona fide chase.

It’s a very Luc Besson kind of joke that, once Fred (Lambert, only a year after being introduced to English-speaking audiences as Tarzan) eludes his pursuers in the underground, we’ll never see him in the sun again, and we definitely won’t have another thrill ride. Instead, we’ll join Fred in discovering the very different way of life taking place in the tunnels of the Métro. It may seem familiar, with commerce and law enforcement and entertainment, but it’s a very different attitude down there. It’s a laid-back, “que sera, sera” kind of vibe, and Fred adapts to it quickly; in his first night, he meets friends who give him food, new clothes, and a place to sleep; he makes the acquaintance of an incredibly strong man who can pry open handcuffs with his bare hands; and he pops into an impromptu party where he immediately starts making friends. If Fred is a natural fit for subway life, Héléna, the gangster’s wife who Fred is both smitten with and cheekily blackmailing, is a more surprising addition to the community. Adjani is stunning in a series of terrifically 80s outfits, but she is possibly most striking in a scene where she returns to her above-ground life and realizes that she can’t stomach it. She gently ingratiates herself into the Métro culture, because that’s what the good guys do in Subway.  

Subway is one of the pivotal entries in the French movement known as “cinéma du look,” in which Besson and fellow directors like Jean-Jacques Beineix and Leos Carax cast aside distractions like narrative in favor of maximum style. Subway has style to burn. Indeed, logic is not anyone’s top priority. One thing may be important at one moment and forgotten the next. Sure, Fred is on the run from zealous policemen and vengeful gangsters, but that’s no reason he can’t take a quick time-out to rehearse the amazing new band he’s assembled out of the various buskers hanging out in the underground. There’s even time for him to team up with the well-connected flower salesman for a quick payroll robbery. Things just happen in Subway because it would be nice if they did. If you’re spending time wondering where Fred finds the explosives to blast open an office safe, or where the band comes up with their matching safari outfits, your head’s in the wrong place.

What’s most fascinating about Subway is how little it cares for the basics of story construction. There are a host of characters, all interesting but defined by the fewest possible characteristics, from the hard-bitten police detective who despises his junior officers, to the friendly purse thief whose primary trait is wearing roller skates, to the bemused drummer played by Jean Reno who hardly utters three sentences but still seems cooler and more relaxed than in any other role in his career. There’s a romance, but it’s conducted almost entirely smoldering looks and chill dialogue. There’s even a climactic collision of passion and violence that is tempered by a happy song to such a degree that even a corpse can’t help but nod along. It doesn’t make sense, and it’s not supposed to. Subway is made of pleasant little moments, and like the people they depict, we just take them as they come.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“There’s nothing that’s ever boring in this one, but it is definitely paced differently than many may be used to.  It is less about the Plot directly and more about the ambiance of the area…  Getting the balance between ‘weird, slice of life Story’ and Plot-driven Film is tricky.  Thankfully, this one balances it quite well… The Ending is a bit odd, but, you know, French.” Alec Pridgen, Mondo Bizzaro

(This movie was nominated for review by Gary Simanton. Suggest a weird movie of your own here.)         

Capsules

CAPSULE: THE BEAST (2023)

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La bête

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DIRECTED BY:

FEATURING: , George MacKay

PLOT: To get a job in a dystopian future, a woman undergoes a procedure designed to dampen her emotional responses by ridding herself of past-life traumas.

Still from The Beast (2023)

COMMENTS: Surely Henry James could never have imagined that, more than a hundred years after he wrote it, a Frenchman would loosely adapt his story “The Beast in the Jungle” as a centuries-spanning science fiction story incorporating a belief in past lives. James’ protagonist suffers a certain paralyzing presentiment of obliteration (the titular Beast), which is shared by (at least one of) Seydoux’s characters; but truthfully, Bertrand Bonello’s ambitious screenplay incorporates almost nothing from the original story—just the theme of loneliness and regret for missed opportunities, and a similar European setting for about 1/3 of the film. It also throws in a metric ton of other concerns, including artificial intelligence, incel culture, and reincarnation.

As suggested by the plot summary and hinted above, The Beast tells three different stories: one set at the turn of the twentieth century, one set approximately in contemporary times, and one set in 2044. This last date is the film’s base reality, despite not being the first story we’re thrown into. The Beast sets up the rather ridiculous premise that past life experiences are encoded in DNA and traumas that lead to automatic emotional responses can be overcome through a therapeutic regression that involves being submerged in a tub of black goo while a computer probes your ear—a concept that sounds like it came out of an esoteric Scientology text. While the procedure, and the theory underlying it, are insane, it doesn’t matter whether we accept them; it only matters that the movie believes in them, and creates a world that operates according to those rules. In Gabrielle’s case, the recurring trauma is her unconsummated passion for Louis, who is a gentleman in the 1900s, a stalker in the early 2000s, and an aspiring functionary like her in his current incarnation. The future’s rationale for the operation is legitimately unsettling, tapping into fears of cybertechnological dehumanization: with so much work automated and taken over by A.I., humans voluntarily try to rid themselves of passion and emotion in order to make more rational decisions that enable them to compete with the dominant machines.

So The Beast is, in a sense, three movies in one. There’s the science fiction fable; the Parisian period piece; and a contemporary stalker drama that quickly shades into (pretty effective) thriller territory.  As a standalone film, the full-length petticoat and starched collars of the Belle Epoque section would have made for a staid and respectable period drama, with a tremendous closing image. The modern day incel story can come off as a preachy, with on-the-nose commentary; MacKay’s portrayal of a 30-year old virgin who vlogs about how he’s “magnificent” and “deserves girls” but “can only have sex in my dreams” would seem like an eye-rolling caricature, if the character were not directly based on real-life incel mass-murderer Elliot Rodger (I believe some of MacKay’s monologues were taken verbatim from Rodger’s YouTube videos). But although each section is merely competent on its own—and arguably make for a bloated picture with a lot of unnecessary fat left in—tying them together in the reincarnation format makes for a whole greater than its parts. Certain conversations are repeated in full in different eras, and recurring themes like dolls/puppets resonate across time. Both previous Gabrielles consult psychics, in radically different contexts, who are able to see through the years and reference things that occurred in other lifetimes. Looking for common threads and shared symbols across the three stories engages the mind more than any of the issues the three tales address. And Bonello sprinkles significant weirdness throughout the project, much of it justified as artifacts of the disorientating effects of the procedure, but some of it freestanding. In the latter category is the opening with in a green screen studio, apparently rehearsing a scene for the upcoming film as she takes direction form an unseen voice (belonging to Bonello). Disorienting editing, uncanny dolls, dream interludes, unexpected clips from movies, a panicky laptop pop-up nightmare, and a nightclub with rotating mid-20th century themes all contribute to the strange flavor. The end result is a challenging art-house feature that doesn’t always hit its marks, but nevertheless remains intellectually stimulating.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“…a weird sweeping romance and sci-fi dystopia mix that taps into so many contemporary anxieties, from AI stealing our jobs to climate disaster and the overall sense that the world is becoming unfeeling. It’s existential, yes, but it’s at its core a love story.”–Sara Clements, Pajiba (contemporaneous)

The Beast (Janus Contemporaries) [Blu-ray]

The Beast (Janus Contemporaries) [Blu-ray]
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APOCRYPHA CANDIDATE: DAAAAAALI! (2023)

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Daaaaalí! is currently available for VOD rental or purchase.

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DIRECTED BY:

FEATURING: , , Jonathan Cohen, , Pio Marmaï, Didier Flamand, Éric Naggar

PLOT: A journalist attempts to interview Salvador Dalí, but the painter’s erratic behavior and demands constantly cut her attempts short.

Still from Daaaaaali! (2023)
Anaïs Demoustier in DAAAAAALÍ! Courtesy of Music Box Films.

WHY IT MIGHT JOIN THE APOCRYPHA: If you asked who would be the most intriguing modern director to concoct a Salvador Dalí biopic, Quentin Dupieux’s name would be at the very top of the list. While other directors resort to bemused realism to tackle the Surrealist icon’s notoriously slippery persona, Dupieux is a kindred spirit who fearlessly jumps right in to what makes Dalí tick: the irrational, the nonsensical, the dreamlike. Confident in its refusal to explain its enigmatic subject, Daaaalí! is the only cinematic portrait one could imagine the real Dalí endorsing.

COMMENTS: More weirdly witty than funny and anything but insightful, Daaaalí! tackles its unknowable subject in the only way possible: as a dream. Aspiring journalist Judith somehow gets the famous artist to agree to sit down for a magazine interview, but when he finally arrives—after imperiously striding down a seemingly endless hotel corridor for long enough for Judith to hit the bathroom and order room service—he immediately shuts down the interview because there’s no camera. Then, when Judith reschedules and secures a camera for a second attempt, Dalí accidentally destroys it. And so on. Dalí serves as a negative force in the film, denying and sabotaging every plan that does not accord with his transient, selfish whims. It soon becomes apparent that, like Judith, we are never going to learn anything about the artist beyond his surface facade of arrogance.

But insight into the man is not what this movie is, or should be, about. Instead, Daaaaali! is thoroughly Surrealist in spirit, evoking Dalí’s aesthetics (and, equally, those of Dalí’s great frenemy, ). These men’s sensibilities are a perfect fit for Dupieux, who barely has to fine-tune his own eccentric predilections at all to tell this story. After the premise is established, we quickly spin off into a labyrinth of dreams and anachronisms (we see completed paintings, then later in the film we see Dalí in the process of painting them). Nothing encapsulates the playful narrative spirit better than the long digression (over a bowl of muddy stew with live worms) in which a priest tells the painter about a dream he had where he was shot by a cowboy while riding a donkey. That incident doesn’t end the dream, however; it keeps recurring throughout the film. We are quickly lost inside an arbitrary narrative structure that almost gets as confusing as Dupieux’s bewildering Reality. But we’re anchored in Dalí’s frustratingly quirky, self-involved personality, and in Judith’s repeated failure to capture anything of substance about her quarry.

There are basically four actors who play Dalí, plus one actor who plays old Dalí (a sub-Dalí standing to one side of the main story), plus at least one bonus Dalí who only appears for a few seconds. There could be more Dalís running about, but 4-5 Dalís seems like the most accurate number, without counting fractional Dalís. This use of multiple actors in a central role is, naturally, a reference to Buñuel’s That Obscure Object of Desire, just as the continuous failure to consummate the interview recalls the failed dinner party of The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie. The gentle anticlericalism shown by the repeatedly-shot priest character is also a decidedly Buñuelian touch. Dupieux adapts these Surrealist motifs so naturally that, as much as anything, Daaaaali! serves as a reminder that the Rubber auteur, while often trafficking in modern pop culture references like slashers and superheroes, is himself firmly anchored in the Buñuel/Dalí tradition. Dupieux even creates a living Dalíesque tableau to bookend the film: a piano with a tree sprouting from its cabin and a fountain spouting from its keyboard, draining into a piano-shaped pool. Although critics sometimes view Dupieux as a lightweight due to his prolific output and disinterest in tackling political or otherwise “weighty” themes, in actuality he stands nearly alone in carrying on this strain of classical European Surrealism. We may not learn much about Dalí in Daaaaali!, but hopefully people will learn more about Quentin Dupieux’s underappreciated talents.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“… great fun and appropriately strange, with Dupieux delivering a dream-layered understanding of artistry and impatience with palpable glee… ‘Daaaaaali!’ doesn’t build to a stunning conclusion. It moves slowly to weirder and weirder encounters, doing so with an assortment of performers portraying Dali, with everyone offering their fingerprint on the subject, making for flavorful acting choices.”–Brian Orndorf, Blu-ray.com (contemporaneous)

Capsules

CAPSULE: THE ANIMAL KINGDOM (2023)

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DIRECTED BY: Thomas Cailley

FEATURING: Paul Kircher, , , Tom Mercier

PLOT: A plague that turns ordinary people into human-animal hybrids has afflicted a family’s wife and mother, putting a strain on the relationship of the father and son.

The Animal Kingdom (2023)

COMMENTS: In the opening of The Animal Kingdom, a man with one partially-formed bird wing violently bursts out of the back of a locked ambulance caught in a traffic jam and tries to flee as orderlies attempt to corral him back into the vehicle. “Strange days,” one stranded motorist nonchalantly remarks to another. Apparently a plague, disease, or curse has been hybridizing humans with random types of animals, with no way of predicting when the condition will strike. François’ wife, Émile’s mother, has caught it, and now has fur on her face and claw marks on the wall of her hospital room. Her doctor assures the family that the experimental medical treatments are working, though, and encourages them in their plan to relocate a remote town in south France so the can be closer to her when she’s placed into a new “research” facility. François, who’s a bit of an eccentric trying to instill a distrust of authority in his son, hopes to reunite the family. But Émile’s sense of smell seems to be getting keener…

Besides the birdman, we get glimpses of tentacled squid/octopus girl in the supermarket, an aardvark lady, and some sort of tree-clinging chameleon. The costuming and prosthetics are always interesting, although you may wish to see more of the mutants. The movie instead focuses almost entirely on the relationship between François and Émile, on Émile’s attempts to fit in with his new classmates, and on Émile’s anxiety over his own bodily changes. Attitudes towards the mutants are mostly revealed indirectly: the widespread use of the emerging slur “critters” to describe the victims, the schoolkids’ lunchroom debate about the issue (with opinions ranging from coexistence to shooting them on sight), and the fact that the entire phenomenon seems to be considered a police matter as much as a medical issue. The hybrids flee whenever authorities approach, and the government is building what may amount to detention centers.

No explanation is given for the transformations, medical or otherwise. Completely uninterested in the science fiction behind it all, The Animal Kingdom instead critiques humanity’s insistence on morphological purity, and on our instinct to exile community members for any deviation. Transphobia might be the most obvious contemporary touchstone here—though the afflicted take no voluntary steps to transform their bodies—but the movie’s lessons can easily be transferred to any group of outsiders: minorities, immigrant, queers, the mentally ill, and of course, furries. Realistically, most people without a direct family connection to a victim quickly turn against the critters; besides the fear of the unknown, identifying a group of outsiders immediately elevates your own status as an insider. Only a minority of fundamentally decent folk offer empathy, support, or accommodations. When asked if he still kissed his wife after her transformation, François replies, “It was still her. It changed nothing.” The movie may refuse to unfurl its metaphor, but its moral is clear. The Animal Kingdom is, ironically, humanistic.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“‘The Animal Kingdom’ is quite emotionally vivid at times, and fine acting supports Cailley’s weird ideas, making the picture feel real while it gradually becomes a fantasy.”–Brian Orndorf, Blu-ray.com (contemporaneous)

The Animal Kingdom [Blu-ray]

The Animal Kingdom [Blu-ray]
  • Cannes Film Festival Nominee: Un Certain Regard
  • Winner Grand Jury Prize-Palm Springs International Film Festival
  • Includes English Dubbed Version
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