A film by Bruno Dumont
With: Anamaria Vartolomei, Camille Cottin, Lyna Khoudri, Bernard Pruvost, Fabrice Luchini, Philippe Jore, Julien Manier, Brandon Vlieghe
A small village of Northern France is the battleground of undercover extraterrestrial knights.
Our rate: *
Bruno Dumont‘s #TheEmpire, as we feared, disappointed us at #Berlinale2024. Space opera is, in spite of itself, akin to the madcap history of space, and although Bruno Dumont denies having had any intention of doing so, the (cheap) technique for this kind of film (sets, costumes, special effects), and the codes of the genre that he takes up, officially out of admiration, (when we see it more as provocation, or a game to go after a new audience) totally undermines the film – with the exception of the final scene, which is rather successful in this respect. It also falls into the trap of empty dialogue (which isn’t parodic here either, just imitated from what’s being done) and, above all, struggles to convince from the point of view of the very simplistic (and deliberately so) dramaturgy. We’re at the opposite end of the spectrum from his best films (Hadejwich, France, Hors Satan, etc.), which managed to provoke, deeply unsettle and take a hard look at things, and even the comedic result disappoints, too much based on buffoonery and the offbeat nature of the genre crossover. Like Adèle Haenel, we also fail to understand the point of gratuitously eroticizing certain scenes, and of asking either Anamaria Vortolomei (see our recent interview) or Lyna Khoudri to propose characters who would resemble a Lara Croft for the former, and a Betty (37°2 in the morning), Brigitte Bardot (Dieu créa la femme, or Contempt) or Sofia Loren for the latter. Only the nods to Dumont‘s filmography work (the landscapes, the spaceships inspired by the Sainte Chapelle or a castle in Italy) and the pastilles inviting Petit Quinquin‘s commander and inspector to poke their noses into this story of the genesis of mankind, where humanity was born of desire between the representative of Good and the representative of Evil (a far cry from the Bible, unlike the first Star Wars).