Ma Loute (2016)
Directed by Bruno Dumont

Film Review

To date, Bruno Dumont has made nine films and he still remains the most resolutely hard-to-pin down of French film directors.  The only thing that we can say about him for certain is that he never does things by halves.  After proving himself the master of the ultra-realist contemporary drama with La Vie de Jésus (1997) and L'Humanité (1999), Dumont moved on to wartime drama and mysticism with the same unflinching austerity before doing the unthinkable and switching to outlandish black comedy for a televised mini-series P'tit Quinquin (2014).  For his latest film, Dumont stays with comedy and takes absurdity to its absolute limit, delivering a film that is so manically unhinged that it cannot help looking like a complete inversion of his earlier work.  Ma Loute has the same northern France setting as L'Humanité, and a plot with a startling number of similarities, but it looks less like a Bruno Dumont film and more like the result of some freakish collaboration between Luis Buñuel, Hergé, Federico Fellini and the Monty Python team after an all-night drugs binge.

One of the most recognisable features of Dumont's trenchantly realist brand of cinema is a preference for non-professional and inexperienced actors.  Rarely has he worked with established big name actors, so perhaps the biggest surprise his latest film offers is its trio of A-listers slung into the prominent lead roles as immodestly as an Essex girl in a leopard skin coat and a diamond tiara.  Juliette Binoche has already had her Dumont baptism in his sober biographical piece Camille Claudel, 1915 (2013), but in Ma Loutte the actress is allowed to run completely riot - in fact she goes on what can only be described as the maddest comedy binge in any film by a French director who is not in immediate risk of being certified.  Fabrice Luchini and Valeria Bruni Tedeschi are not quite so inclined to prove themselves worthy occupants of a padded cell as Mlle Binoche but they take advantage of the opportunity that the film gives them to extend their comedy repertoire by several kilometres, leaving the more serious stuff to the talented non-professionals that the director has somehow managed to pressgang into his film on his peregrinations around northern France, no doubt resembling the child catcher from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang as he does so.

Taking the comedy lead on the - er - less glamorous side of the cast is Didier Després, who gets to play the most ridiculously obese and ineffectual police inspector ever conceived (he makes Inspector Clouseau look like Hercule Poirot on brain-enhancing steroids).  So pathologically rotund is Després's hopeless Inspector Machin that not only does he have difficulty walking, he can barely stand up for two minutes without falling over.  With his beanpole assistant Malfoy (played by Cyril Rigaux) he forms a comedy duo that has to be the most grotesque parody of Laurel and Hardy ever.  Then there are the Brufort family, who somehow manage to be even more subhuman and cartoonish than the Van Peteghem aristocrats played by Luchini and company.  This bunch will really give you nightmares. 

Looking like a job lot from an Italian neo-realist film of the 1950s or the result of some top secret biological research programme that went badly wrong, this menagerie of badly coiffured, rotted tooth mutants are clearly not intended to gain our sympathies, as their idea of welcoming tourists is to slice them up and throw them into the cooking pot.  Are the Van Peteghems destined to be their next big feast? - that's the question hanging in the air as this extreme satire of the class divide wends its unpredictable course between topsy-turvy absurdity and unbridled lunacy.  All this may sound a bit fanciful, so it's nice to know that Dumont doesn't overlook the human interest angle.  In addition to the egregious class stereotyping, lampooning of the French police and casual allusions to cannibalism, there's also a romantic subplot involving the ugliest member of the Brufort brood (Brandon Lavieville) and the Van Peteghems' sexually ambiguous transgender offspring Billie (Raph).  Love may not entirely overcome the barriers of class but it might just keep the prospective in-laws off the menu - for a while.

Committed auteur though he is, Bruno Dumont can hardly be described as the most accessible of filmmakers - until now.  Ma Loute has enough off-kilter charm and exuberant zaniness to make it appeal to a much wider audience than the narrow band of hardcore art house aficionados who are the director's natural followers.  Those familiar with Dumont's work will have fun trying to spot any discernible connection with his more sober offerings.  Those who require that a film should be meaningful as well as entertaining will no doubt amuse themselves by teasing out the socio-political messages that are subtly encoded in the film's comedy excesses.  But for those who just want to laugh their troubles away and spend two hours in a universe of complete and utter madness Ma Loute is just the ticket.  It almost succeeds in convincing us that the world we inhabit is sane - well, nearly.

Film Synopsis

In the summer of 1910, as is their custom, the Van Peteghems, a wealthy family from Lille, come to Slack Bay in northern France for their holidays.  Residing at an Egyptian-styled villa named Typhonium, the party comprises André Van Peteghem, his wife Isabelle and their two troublesome young daughters.  Also present are André's extravagant sister Aude and her daughter Billie, who likes to pass herself off as a boy.  Meanwhile, police inspector Machin and his subordinate Malfroy are busy investigating the mysterious disappearance of several tourists in the area, without any success.  The culprits are the Bruforts, a family of poor fisherfolk who, barely eking out an existence as mussel harvesters, have resorted to eating holidaymakers.  The Bruforts' eldest son, Ma Loute, attracts the attention of Billie, and it isn't long before a romance begins to blossom...