La Vie de Jésus (1997)
Directed by Bruno Dumont

Film Review

Winner of the Prix Jean Vigo 1997, La Vie de Jésus marked an auspicious debut for Bruno Dumont, a young director who, within a remarkably short period of time, came to be widely regarded as one of the most accomplished auteur filmmakers of his generation.  As with his subsequent, equally well regarded, feature L'Humanité (1999), Dumont employs a stark minimalist approach, superficially reminiscent of that adopted by Robert Bresson towards the end of his career, to paint a disturbing and yet blisteringly authentic portrait of contemporary life, revealing the ugliness that is inherent in both the exterior world (one marred by moral decay and post-industrial decline) and the warped interior worlds of the protagonists.  Prior to this, Dumont had made just two short films, one of which, Marie et Freddy (1994), introduces the two central characters of his first feature.

Vaguely echoing Mathieu Kassovitz's controversial 1995 film La Haine, La Vie de Jésus confronts the issues of racism and social exclusion in contemporary France with a brutal directness, but without resorting to the stylistic excesses and shock tactics employed in the earlier film.  For all its restraint, Dumont's film is a far more uncomfortable film to watch than Kassovitz's, its lethargic pacing and sparse dialogue underscoring the torturing emptiness experienced by the central character (superbly rendered by the lead actor David Douche) as he struggles to find meaning in a world from which he appears to be permanently estranged.  Autism at both a personal and societal level conspire to render the lives of Freddy and those around him virtually unbearable, and this inability for individuals to connect with one another and see themselves as part of a wider community is what makes it so easy for racism to assert such a malignant influence on those that succumb to it.

In another kind of film, the semi-rural location would provide an exquisitely picturesque backdrop.  With the help of his gifted cinematographer Philippe Van Leeuw, Dumont manages to imbue the setting with a sustained aura of ennui and menace, subtly hinting at the powerful ancient forces that lie just beneath the surface, those that manifest themselves in the evils to which we are all susceptible if provoked.  Like Bresson, Dumont employs exclusively non-professional actors, although, unlike Bresson, he meticulously coached his actors to give rigorously naturalistic performances, thereby dispensing with the Brechtian distancing that devotees of the earlier director consider to be so essential to his art.

Dumont compels us to identify with his unfortunate protagonist (a modern take on Dostoevsky's The Idiot maybe), and as are slowly but surely drawn into his fractured inner world we gain an understanding of how he is compelled to act in the way he does, to become the primal savage that lies at the core of each and every one of us.  We delude ourselves if we believe we would act differently from Freddy if were in Freddy's predicament - and this revelation, framed with admirable subtlety and sensitivity, is ultimately what makes La Vie de Jésus such a powerful and pertinent piece of modern cinema.

Film Synopsis

For Freddy, an unemployed young man suffering from autism, life is one long round of unending monotony.  Living in Bailleul, a small backwater town in Northern France, there is nothing for him to do other than to listlessly roam the district on his motorbike with his gang of friends.  His mother Yvette is wrapped up in her own world, running a little café frequented by locals who are content to fritter their time away in tedious pursuits.  Freddy has no qualifications, no prospect of work, no future.  His only consolation is his girlfriend Marie, who works in a local supermarket.  When one day he sees a young Arab man attempting to chat up his girlfriend Freddy's frustrations with life are at once transformed into an incontrollable fury.  Suddenly, his world is threatened and he feels the urge to hit back...