The Empire (Bruno Dumont, 2024)

Having strayed from his home turf for 2021's largely Paris-set France, director Bruno Dumont once again finds himself on the familiar territory of the Opal Coast with The Empire (curiously, Dumont's Outside Satan was filmed under the same working title).  As with Outside Satan, The Empire is concerned with the age-old battle between good and evil.  Yet despite sharing the same broad theme and setting, the two films are very different from one another, with Outside Satan's Bressonian austerity nowhere in evidence as The Empire firmly aligns itself with the absurdist comedies Dumont has been making for the past decade.  Out of Dumont's post-Camille Claudel 1915 output, only 2019's Jeanne can be classed as a mostly "straight" film, but even that punishing, rigorous exercise was the sequel to a deranged heavy metal musical centring on Joan of Arc.  

Dumont's shift into comedy began with the 2014 miniseries Li'l Quinquin, which kicked off a loose trilogy that is now capped with The Empire (in between came a second TV series, Coincoin and the Extra-Humans).  These three works are linked by a pair of bumbling cops, Van der Weyden (Bernard Pruvost) and Carpentier (Philippe Jore), who over the course of the past ten years have been investigating increasingly bizarre crimes.  Coincoin and the Extra-Humans introduced a sci-fi element to proceedings, and The Empire sees Dumont make the leap to full-bore science fiction, with his latest film playing as a Ch'timi take on Star Wars, lightsabres and all.  As far as Dumont's oeuvre is concerned, it has been posited that The Empire is a mix of Ma Loute and The Life of Jesus, but it is difficult to see much of the latter—barring the general locale—in this light divertissement.      

At its most basic level, The Empire pits two alien factions against each other as they vie to take control of Earth.  The Queen (Camille Cottin) spearheads the benevolent 1s, while Beelzebub (Fabrice Luchini) is the leader of the nefarious 0s; each side has taken a foothold in a small fishing village by inhabiting the bodies of locals.  Thus, 0-fuelled fisherman Jony (Brandon Vlieghe) has fathered a baby who, it is foretold, will lead the dark side to triumph—sound familiar?  Jane (Anamaria Vartolomei) works on behalf of the 1s, and is devoted to preserving mankind; she has a sidekick in the form of Rudy (Jeanne's Julien Manier), while Jony is backed up by Line (Lyna Khoudri).  Although these otherworldly beings should have loftier matters on their minds, their earthly bodies serve as a major distraction—particularly when opposing numbers Jane and Jony develop a mutual attraction.   

Just as France saw its male lead replaced prior to the start of filming, Dumont was forced into recasting no less than three of The Empire's main roles, with Vartolomei, Khoudri and Cottin replacing Adèle Haenel, Lily-Rose Depp and Belgian actress Virginie Efira, respectively.  While Vartolomei is the standout performer here, it is a pity that the film gives Pruvost, Jore and Cottin so little to do, especially as Luchini has way too much screen time as the tiresomely unfunny Beelzebub.  The Empire marks Luchini and Dumont's third collaboration together, but there's a sense that this time the director has indulged his star to the point of the film's detriment.  As a coda to the Quinquin cycle, The Empire possesses a sloppy charm, and while it's certainly the slightest entry in the trilogy, there is nevertheless some fun to be had from its splicing of the fantastic with the workaday.     

Darren Arnold

Images: ARP Sélection

London Film Festival 2024: Programme Launch

The 68th BFI London Film Festival (LFF) today announced the full programme line-up, which will be presented in cinemas and online across the UK. Over twelve days from 9–20 October, the LFF will invite audiences to return to its flagship venues in the heart of London – BFI Southbank and the Southbank Centre’s Royal Festival Hall, which between them host Galas, Special Presentations and Official Competition titles. Films and Series from all strands of the Festival will screen in many of central London’s iconic cinemas, with global film talent in attendance. A curated selection of features will also be showcased at 9 partner venues across the UK.

Almost every feature and series will screen to audiences in the UK for the very first time, with many shown publicly for the first time anywhere in the world. As in previous years, the feature film programme is organised by strand to encourage discovery and to open up the Festival to new audiences. These are: Love, Debate, Laugh , Dare, Thrill, Cult, Journey, Create, Experimenta , Family, Shorts and Treasures. Audiences can also find new and exciting series programming in many of the strands. Premieres include 39 World Premieres (15 features, 2 series, 19 shorts, 3 immersive), 12 International Premieres (6 features, 4 shorts, 2 immersive) and 21 European Premieres (17 features, 1 series, 3 shorts).

World Premieres from filmmakers and artists include: Steve McQueen’s BLITZ which opens the festival, Ben Taylor’s JOY starring Thomasin McKenzie, James Norton and Bill Nighy, the BFI National Archive and The Film Foundation’s restoration SILENT SHERLOCK, Family Gala THAT CHRISTMAS directed by Simon Otto and starring Brian Cox, Jodie Whittaker and Bill Nighy, Eloise King’s eye-opening investigative documentary THE SHADOW SCHOLARS, Manchester-set debut feature from Gino Evans TREADING WATER, and the BFI’s restoration of one of the UK's greatest animated films: Martin Rosen’s WATERSHIP DOWN.

Audiences will enjoy a rich programme of fiction, documentary, animation, artists’ moving image, short film, newly restored classics from the world’s archives, and exciting international works made in immersive and episodic forms. LFF for Free will return to the Festival with a compelling range of talks and short films alongside imaginative, playful events and filmmaker Q&As, in-person at BFI Southbank and at gallery@oxo. The Festival will also be accessible UK-wide via free short films on BFI Player, including the films nominated for Best Short, which viewers will be able to enjoy from 9–20 October.

Source/images: BFI

The Night Visitors (Michael Gitlin, 2023)

Since the mid-1980s, experimental filmmaker Michael Gitlin has steadily worked away on an eclectic series of projects, including Duplicating the Copy from Memory, The Birdpeople, The Earth Is Young and That Which Is Possible.  Over the decades, Gitlin has seen his work selected for numerous international film festivals, including the London Film Festival, the Toronto International Film Festival, and International Film Festival Rotterdam.  It is at the last of these where Gitlin's latest film, The Night Visitors, played as part of the 2024 edition's Harbour strand, in which it took its place alongside the likes of festival opener Head South, Julien Maury and Alexandre Bustillo's eagerly awaited horror The Soul Eater, and Rotterdam favourite Amanda Kramer's new film, So Unreal.  Having received its Dutch premiere at the festival, The Night Visitors had its third and final IFFR outing in early February, when it screened at the city's KINO.

The Night Visitors is a documentary all about moths, and in less than 75 minutes Gitlin's film casts its net (ha!) far and wide as it examines these nocturnal lepidopterans.  Given that there are around 160,000 species of moth, the film can only look at a relatively small sample of these inscrutable creatures, but Gitlin sprinkles The Night Visitors with some striking examples: the tree-munching spongy (formerly gypsy) moth (Lymantria dispar); the giant, silk-making Polyphemus moth (Antheraea polyphemus); and the gorgeous, brightly-coloured rosy maple moth (Dryocampa rubicunda).  While there are plenty of fully grown moths on show, the film is punctuated with fascinating footage of several instars as a caterpillar undergoes its transformation.  The Night Visitors is an experience that allows us to get up close and personal with its title characters, with the superb cinematography befitting of a top-class nature documentary.     

Indeed, there are times during The Night Visitors when you have to remind yourself you're watching the work of a video artist known for his avant-garde efforts, as the film almost plays as a straight, linear piece of nonfiction—albeit one that exhibits the odd experimental flourish.  A fair chunk of the running time is devoted to the curious story of Frenchman Étienne Léopold Trouvelot, an astronomer and amateur entomologist who perhaps should have stuck exclusively to the former role, given that his botched efforts at silk harvesting led to the spread of the aforementioned spongy moth.  Trouvelot brought some of the now-invasive species' egg masses into the US from Europe and was raising the moths in controlled conditions when some of the larvae escaped; with the catastrophic damage done—the caterpillars now defoliate over a million acres of forest every year—Trouvelot lost interest in entomology and eventually returned to France, where he remained until his death.    

The Night Visitors also references Edgar Allan Poe's "The Sphinx", a New York-set tale in which the protagonist encounters the badass outsider that is the death's-head hawkmoth (Acherontia atropos)—even if the species wasn't, and isn't, to be found in the United States.  As Gitlin wryly observes, "never let geographical distribution get in the way of overwrought symbolism" (while there are several voiceovers on the soundtrack, this particular nugget—like much of the film's most interesting information—is relayed via concise onscreen text).  The Night Visitors' inclusion of "The Sphinx"—which is here given a brief, witty precis—provides a tangible link to Gitlin's 1996 film Berenice, a freewheeling adaptation of Poe's eponymous short story.  As experimenta goes, The Night Visitors is certainly one of the more accessible examples; it's a fluid, engaging and beguiling work, one which provides a very welcome insight into the opaque lives of these remarkable insects.

Darren Arnold

Images: Festival Scope