Flandres (2006) - film review

In a remote stretch of countryside somewhere in France, a young woman named Barbe pursues an intense physical relationship with a young farmer, Demester.  The latter seems not to mind when Barbe begins to have an affair with another local lad, Blondel.   Demester and Blondel are just two of several young men in the area who have been called up for active military service in a distant land.  The prospect of adventure excites the young men and they are eager to depart.  But it is not long before the reality of war shatters their illusions and transforms them into thuggish gun-toting monsters.  Meanwhile, back home, Barbe suffers an increasingly torturous emotional trauma as she anticipates the horrors that her lovers are enduring, far from the country of their birth...

After the disappointingly vague and incoherent Twentynine Palms (2003), director Bruno Dumont showed a welcome return to form with Flandres, a bleakly expressionistic work in which the worst failings of human nature are exposed like rotting blood-encrusted carcasses on a butcher’s shelf.  Many critics hailed this as a masterpiece and few were surprised when it won the Grand Jury Prize at Cannes in 2006.  Released at a time when two ill-advised and seemingly doomed military adventures were being pursued by the West, Flandres offers a timely reflection on the futility and corrupting influence of warfare.

Dumont first revealed his flair for incisive, thought-provoking and darkly captivating cinema in his controversial 1997 social drama La Vie de Jésus, which he followed up with his equally sobering L’Humanité (1999).  These two films and Flandres very nearly form a trilogy, in which the social disintegration, moral vacuity and lack of individual fulfilment in our materialistic post-industrial era are explored with uncompromising realism and an unmistakable sense of despair.  Flandres departs somewhat from the trenchant realism of Dumont’s first two films, although it still shows the director’s penchant for stark naturalism.  

There is a chilling dream-like quality to this film which is evident in both of its raw, visually arresting settings: a grim, rain-sodden area of countryside in northern France and a torrid desert battle zone, presumably Iraq or Afghanistan.  The subtle stylisation of the war scenes somehow renders these more viscerally shocking than if Dumont had gone for a more conventional approach, and the impact of these scenes goes way beyond the usual anti-war statement.   

The film shows us that what we think of as civilisation is in fact no more than a mocking charade, a dressing screen to hide our shame.  Beneath the surface of so-called propriety, the savage lurks, hiding its true nature with powder and perfume.  Whatever we may think, bestial aggression is an inescapable component of the human condition.  Given the appropriate stimuli, the right set of circumstances, the animal side of our nature is sure to emerge, eager to sate its hungry appetite for lust and blood.  You only have to subject yourself to one installment of the Jerry Springer Show to realise the truth of this.  

Flandres is by no means an easy film to watch.  The nature of its subject and Dumont’s unflinchingly cold, austere approach will doubtless scare off many viewers, who will be driven even deeper into their comfort zone of reassuringly bland and puerile mainstream pap, to be spared such unsettling images as the killing of child soldiers, violent rape and revenge castration.  But for those with the stamina for this kind of challenging cinematic ordeal, Flandres is a bold and alluring masterwork that will leave a lasting impression, causing you to reflect long and hard on what kind of creature we really are.

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