Monday, December 29, 2014
Hors Satan (2011)
HORS SATAN (2011) ¢ ¢ ¢ ¢
D: Bruno Dumont
David Dewaele, Alexandra Lemâtre,
Christophe Bon, Aurore Broutin
There's a guy who lives in a makeshift camp down by the beach. He looks like a vagrant. The area around there is rural: corn fields, patches of tall marsh grass and pastures where cattle graze. The vagrant lives off handouts from the nearby houses, and there's this one girl especially, a vaguely punk-looking young woman with pale skin and spiky black hair, who gives him sandwiches and apparently washes his clothes. The two of them take long walks together, and sometimes when she's in a tough spot, he helps her out. He seems to have magical powers, but whether he's an angel, or a demon, or something else, is hard to say. The woman offers herself to him, but he says no. He doesn't tell her why. He just tells her that's how it is. There's no music except for the sounds of birds. There are a lot of long takes. A lot of tight closeups and pensive stares. To make something like this work, you need actors with charisma, and the movie has two of them: David Dewaele who plays the vagrant and Alexandra Lemâtre who plays the girl. You don't really know what's going on in it, or where it's going to go, or even what it's about. That's how it hooks you. You keep watching because you want to find out.