Bruno Dumont is back again with another "comedy," SLACK BAY. Run for the hills.

Ah, Bruno Dumont. If there is another international movie-maker coupling such great renown to so little talent, I shall be surprised. After regaling us with a couple of early and dark tales that were credited for raising more questions than supplying any answers (always a good ploy for pseudo deep-thinkers, and which TrustMovies admits took him in to some extent), Dumont moved on to two truly terrible, appallingly useless and unbelievable films -- Twenty-nine Palms (a new low-point in film-making) and Flanders (not much better).

After tackling religion, very poorly, in Hadewijch, this writer/director (shown at left) did a couple more films (that I chose not to see: we critics do have our limits), before apparently turning his attention to comedy with the well-received Li'l Quinquin, which pretty much every critic (even a majority of audiences) seemed to like. Now we have SLACK BAY, Dumont's new "comedy," which, after missing his last three movies, I decided to give a try. Oh, my god. This is an embarrassment beyond belief: one that has completely finished me off, Bruno-wise.

Ostensibly a mystery about the sudden disappearance in a seaside area of a few people (more and more of them as the movie progresses), in which our "favorite" director gets to try his hand at everything from cross-dressing to cannibalism to magical flying, in the process getting his extremely starry cast -- the strongest assembled for any of his movies -- to overact and embarrass themselves in ways that would immediately decimate less sturdy careers.

Until you've seen Juliette Binoche (above, center) overact like crazy, I swear you will not believe this is even possible. Fabrice Luchini (left and below) and Valeria Bruni-Tedeschi (right) fare a tad better, if only because they're allowed a tiny bit of subtlety along with their craziness.

M. Luchini has been given (or perhaps he actually chose it) a body deformity that enables him to appear grotesque, as do several other characters in the film, particularly, the very fat police inspector (Didier Després, below) involved in finding the culprits here, who consistently falls down -- quite literally -- on the job.

Yes, M. Després is rather heavy, but how the filmmaker heavy-handedly offers up this tired and repetitive slapstick schlock is so stupid that you may have to keep your hand under your chin to avoid the consistent dropping of your jaw. On the plus side, there is some lovely cinematography by Guillaume Deffontaines, and my favorite line of dialog comes as one character notes, "There's a storm on," when, all around, we see only clear, sunny skies.

Dumont makes his upper-class characters deformed and ridiculous and his lower class ones obdurate and nasty. His film work by now pretty much marks the man as a talent-free misanthrope, and Slack Bay only adds to the evidence on hand.

Yes, there's a love story of sorts, with one lover just about clubbing the other to death. Ah, how Dumont! What in hell is this filmmaker trying to say or do here? His movie fails as comedy most of all, but also as satire and/or political/social/religious critique. The film is something to see, all right, but mostly as a touchstone against which all lesser failures can be measured. Oh, come on now, you're probably saying: The movie can't be that bad! Yeah? See for yourself.

From Kino Lorber and running a head-scratching, mind-boggling two hours and two minutes, Slack Bay opened in New York City last week (at the FSLC and the Quad Cinema), and in Los Angeles yesterday, Friday, April 28 (at Laemmle's Monica 4-Plex and Playhouse 7. You can click here (then scroll down) to view upcoming playdates across the country.

Bruno Dumont's latest, HORS SATAN, gets ten days at NYC's Anthology Film Archives

Bruno Dumont is back. He of Hadewijch, Flanders, Twentynine Palms, Humanité and The Life of Jesus has now returned with HORS SATAN (which translates to something like Outside Satan). Here we go again with the "spare" dialog: "I can't take anyone," says she. "There is only one way," notes he. Oh, yeah? One way to what? Skin a cat? No, actually: to get rid, as is going on below, of an unpleasant father (or maybe he's a step-father). Who knows? Who cares? Certainly not the moviegoer who sits through yet another pile of ordure from the pretentious shit-king of cinema, M. Dumont.

The fellow with the rifle, above, is yet another of this filmmaker's very odd "heroes," a man, as usual, of mystery. Is he saint or sinner, healer or killer, chocolate or vanilla? I'll have a scoop of both, thanks. Because, as usual, things are so loosey/goosey, whatever-you-want-to-make-of-them in this Dumont film that you (and he) can have that cake and eat it, too -- along with the accompanying ice cream.

In his new movie, the filmmaker (shown at right) proves he has as little understanding of how a police investigation works as he did of a religious order (Hadewijch), wartime (Flanders) or the operation of an ice cream stand (Twentynine Palms). In the universe of this writer/director, everything and anything happens solely because M. Dumont wants it to.  'Nuff said. My big question in all of his films (since the better Humanité) is this: When have you ever seen people, living in anything approaching a recognizable society, act like this? The answer is never, and that, I suppose, is the appeal of Bruno's work. You want something different? (And don't bother me with questions of logic.) Here it is.

Symbolism, metaphor, and what have you are all fine. But if you are going to present something with a veneer of the real -- like the lovely French countryside, shot so vibrantly by Yves Cape -- it might help to people it with some reality, too.

Here we get that taciturn hero, played on one note by David Dewaele, given to praying, slaying and maybe some healing (though that last one's kind of iffy). This poor guy is constantly being offered a little sex by our insistent heroine (played with a bit more life by newcomer Alexandra Lemâtre) -- whose dad he has already rubbed out and whose would-be boyfriend, a little-too-pushy older guy, he also takes care of in nasty, bloody fashion.

After several tries at seducing our sinner/saint, and repeatedly being put off by him (I guess you could call him "the loner sans boner"), our girl remains frustrated, and our guy plods on gloomily. At this point in the film --- about 75-80 minutes into it -- the DVD I was sent ceased to function. I tried everything I knew to get it to continue to play, including ejecting it, inserting it and starting all over again (you can image how happy that made me). But still, when the disc reached the same point, it simply shut down again.

Now, I realize that M. Dumont seems to think of himself as a movie-maker who deals with religion.  Or spirituality. Or something. So perhaps he will take this as god's punishment on TrustMovies for my profane attitude. I, of course, see it as something else: a kind of reprieve for which I can only mutter, Merci, mon dieu.

Hors Satan, from New Yorker Films and running 109 minutes opens this Friday, January 18, and will play through Sunday, January 27, at New York City's Anthology Film Archives -- with screenings at 6:45 & 9:15 nightly with additional showings on Saturday & Sunday at 4:30. Click here for tickets, and here for directions.

Bruno Dumont's HADEWIJCH: Thank god it's opening in time for the religious holiday

Was Humanité just an over-rated fluke? It's beginning to look more and more likely. With each new film that Bruno Dumont serves up -- Twentynine Palms, Flanders and now HADEWIJCH -- it's is becoming clearer that this fellow has little understanding of how human beings behave or the world works. Consequently, the filmmaker, pictured below, busies himself with rank outsiders: "others" who don't/won't/can't fit in -- working, I guess, from the premise that, if you get as far away as possible from anything remotely resembling normalcy, maybe viewers won't notice how false your characters really are. This would be true for the uber-quirky couple (not to mention the titular community) shown in Twentynine Palms; another couple, this time nearing the brain-dead, in Flanders (and, oh, that atrociously-imagined middle-eastern "war"); and now the religious nut and her zombie family in his new one.

In addition to presenting us with bizarre, cliched (but unreal nonetheless) characters, Dumont likes to insert a heavy-duty subject into the mix: rape and murder in Humanité, more ultra-violence in Twentynine Palms, the war in Flanders, and now religion -- and, oh, yes, terrorism -- in Hadewijch. You can't say that this guy doesn't go for the zeitgeist! If TrustMovies is being crueler than usual here, he also admits that, though he enjoyed (he is stretching that verb hugely) Flanders no more than he did Twentynine Palms, he has now found Hadewijch a bit better than either of the earlier films. Another ten, twenty more movies from Dumont, and who knows how high the enjoyment level will have bubbled.

In Hadewijch -- the name doubles as the moniker of a mystic from centuries past, whom the title charac-ter, Celine, appears to be aping in her quest for the love of Jesus -- we are confronted with another over-the-top character who has such weird ideas of religion and faith (and most everything else, actually) that we can only wonder how she had avoided an asylum until now. Her family, very wealthy, appears as clueless in its way as Celine is in her own.

Into this less-than-believable situation, arrives an Algerian kid from the banlieues, whom Celine comes across (in the Dumont version of meet-cute) and brings home to lunch. Yes!  He in turn introduces her to his brother, a stoic and deeply religious Muslim who is involved in -- not theater, not manufacturing, not running the local Mail Box Express (like a Muslim friend I have here in Jackson Heights). Come on, people: Put on those thinking caps. What else would any self-respecting Muslim be concerned with but -- of course -- terrorism.

Soon, our Celine -- a girl so utterly uncertain of her own ideas that she makes your everyday sheep look like William the Conquerer -- is knee-deep in oh my goodness. And where does religion fit into all of this? Don't ask. Ah, but our Celine certainly does. By the finale I think you might just say that our lass has found... redemption.  Or, as I am fond of calling this sort of thing, re-dumb-tion.

However you choose to view the movie's conclusion, you will probably arise from your seat, shaking your head in amazement, and murmuring, "WTF. Dumont has done it again!"  Now, among all this nonsense, there are some good things to be seen.  The film's cinematography is sterling (by the director's oft-time collaborator Yves Cape), and the filmmaker does have a feel for interesting faces (if not any particular acting ability) like that of his leading lady, newcomer Julie Sokolowski. To be fair, the girl has been given a role of which even a young Meryl Streep might have found it difficult to make much sense.

Dumont has chosen for his locations, as usual, nature and some fairly dismal housing projects, but this time, into the mix he has tossed a fabulous apartment, Celine's home (shown above) -- which makes a nice visual change from the rest of the film -- and, in fact, the rest of his oeuvre.

So forget Santa and just go with god, as Hadewijch, from IFC Films, opens today, December 24, in New York City at the IFC Center, with three showings daily. You can check the performance schedule here.  And if you can't wait -- or can't get into Manhattan -- the movie is already available via IFC On-Demand.  Click the link at left to determine if and how you can get it.