L’Empire (The Empire, 2024, Bruno Dumont)
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| L'Empire © Tessalit Productions |
Bruno Dumont’s newest feature L’Empire falls
firmly in the director’s 2.0 phase outlined in a previous post 4 years ago. As
per this categorization, I placed his original films such as La vie de
Jésus (1997), Humanity (1999), Twentynine
Palms (2003), Flanders (2006) and Hadewijch (2009)
in Phase 1.0, films which depicted harsh reality lived by its characters in the
French countryside. Phase 2.0 started with the arrival of Li'l
Quinquin (2014) and continued with Slack Bay (2016),
Coincoin and the Extra-Humans (2018), films which incorporated a
comedic framework and absurd scenarios while still set in the French
countryside as Dumont’s earlier films.
L'Empire continues a story started in Li'l Quinquin (2014) and then expanded upon in Coincoin and the Extra-Humans (2018). The three films are tied via the presence of Commandant Van der Weyden (Bernard Pruvost) and Lieutenant Carpentier (Philippe Jore), two detectives attempting to solve strange occurrences. In Li'l Quinquin (2014), their scope is limited to solving murder investigations. In Coincoin, the duo start to feel like there is an alien presence involved.
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| Li'l Quinquin |
That alien presence is expanded upon in L’Empire where we do
learn that the French countryside, and by extension Earth, are in the middle of
a cosmic battle between 1’s and 0’s, who are stand-ins for good vs evil battle.
For the most part, average humans aren’t aware that these aliens walk amongst them
and even come to occupy a body of someone they have known since childhood.
Captain Van der Weyden and Lieutenant Carpentier have a
minor role in L'Empire compared to the previous two films. They only arrive after an
incident has occurred and have to make sense of what they are viewing. Their
presence adds to the absurdity of the situation, not that the film is
short on absurd scenarios. Similar to Coincoin, L’Empire has
plenty of winks and nods towards other films in the sci-fi genre with Star
Wars being the most apparent one. Yes, that means there are lightsabers.
But since this is a French film and not Hollywood, that means there is sex and nudity also.
The sex leads to an interesting twist in the cosmic battle.
It is clear that Bruno Dumont is having fun with this material and L’Empire lovingly builds on material depicted in Li'l Quinquin and Coincoin. There is a quick resolution at the end of L’Empire but also opens a door for a future film.
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