Flanders

Flanders is yet another excursion into the dehumanisation of war, but these characters are pretty dehumanised before a shot is even fired in anger and, in fact, the film could well be an exercise in the dehumanisation of film, if there's such a thing. Not a lot happens in Flanders, and I'm not just talking about action or story, which is a given when it comes to Bruno Dumont; I'm talking about emotion. Set on a farm somewhere in Flanders, the story follows the non-adventures of monosyllabic farmhand Demenster. Demenster gets conscripted and takes off for an unmanned country in the Middle East. With him is Blondel (Cretel), a local who has fallen for Demenster's on again, off again, slutty and disturbed girlfriend Barbe (Leroux). The film's stripped back, minimalist dialogue mirrors the bleak, wintry landscape of Flanders and the rocky mountainsides of Iraq or Afghanistan or wherever Dumont places the war scenes. Everything is matter-of-fact: the sex, the killings and the rapes, and this spills over into the (hopefully) deliberate emotionless performances from all concerned. However, somewhere in the middle of nothing, Dumont hopes that we find something - our own humanity, perhaps. Clever that. Still though, I wouldn't want to sit through it again.