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 1915output, 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.
In Christophe Honoré's superb 2007 film Love Songs—arguably its director's finest work—Louis Garrel, in a scene as moving as it was unusual, employed the NATO phonetic alphabet to convey the death of his girlfriend. In a remarkable coincidence, and for very similar reasons, Garrel also uses the same code, "Delta–Charlie–Delta" ("décédé", meaning deceased), in Rachel Lang's Our Men, where its use is no less haunting. In Our Men, Garrel stars as Maxime, a French foreign legion commanding officer who's leading a tricky mission in Mali; when one of his men is killed during an ambush by Islamic insurgents, it's down to Maxime to report the death and here, as in Love Songs, Garrel puts his intense features to good use as he grimly relays the news.
Garrel's turn in Our Men provides a reminder of both the sort of part he's been offered in recent times, and how these roles differ from his work as a younger man; his early appearances in the likes of Honore's Ma Mère and Bernardo Bertolucci's The Dreamers saw the actor cast as louche, erratic types, but more recently the tendency has been to match him with relatively upright roles, such as when he played Alfred Dreyfus in Roman Polanski's absorbing J'Accuse. The steady Maxime is a fairly typical part for the Garrel of today, even if the actor can still rise to the challenge when tasked with channelling his inner weasel, as evidenced in Woody Allen's most recent film, Rifkin's Festival. But Garrel has done well to avoid the sort of typecasting that once seemed inevitable, and he's always an engaging, watchable presence. Maxime's wife, Céline, is played by the excellent Camille Cottin, a performer who, like her co-star, has worked with Christophe Honoré; also as with Garrel, Cottin has successfully edged away from her earlier roles, with a recent string of dramatic parts demonstrating a range beyond comedy.
While Garrel and Cottin are the two biggest stars in the film—which also features Lucie Debay and Claire Denis mainstay Grégoire Colin in supporting roles—their characters make way for a younger couple, Ukrainians Nika and Vlad (Ina Marija Bartaité, Aleksandr Kuznetsov). The taciturn Vlad is under Maxime's command, and Nika, who has only recently arrived on the army base in Corsica, soon befriends busy, affable lawyer Céline, who asks Nika if she would be interested in babysitting her and Maxime's son; it is through this job that Nika gets to know some of the other legionnaires' wives. With Vlad away on duty, Nika cuts a rather lonely figure, and even on the few occasions when Vlad returns home, he seems distant and is reluctant to discuss Nika's hopes of starting a family. Vlad does buy a puppy, however, and this very cute canine does provide good company for Nika as she fills her long days. But Nika still feels rejected by the absent Vlad, and the welcome attention she receives from another man leads to a rather predictable complication.
With its focus on the soldiers' partners in general and Nika in particular, Our Men may surprise those expecting to see wall to wall scenes of warfare; while the film does indeed spend some time "over there", the combat never feels especially authentic, so it's probably just as well that the real meat of the story takes place away from the warzone. Our Men, which screens this weekend at the London Film Festival, is a strong film, but sadly it seems inevitable that its release will be overshadowed by the death of its young star: six months ago, Ina Marija Bartaité was killed when a drunk driver knocked her off her bicycle. This tragedy occurred ten years on from the untimely death of Bartaité's mother Yekaterina Golubeva, who, as well as starring in Bruno Dumont's Twentynine Palms and her partner Leos Carax's Pola X, appeared in two films by the aforementioned Claire Denis. It is not inapt to suggest that Denis' Colin-starring Beau travail—one of the most memorable films about life in the foreign legion—would form a fine double bill with the engrossing, affecting Our Men.
On a Magical Night marks the sixth collaboration between director Christophe Honoré and actress Chiara Mastroianni, and it follows the general rule that these two are at their best when working with each other. While Love Songs remains the pinnacle of the pair's work together, On a Magical Night - which reunites Honoré and Mastroianni for the first time since 2011's Beloved - sees the two drive each other on to good effect. Mastroianni picked up the best performance award in Cannes' Un Certain Regard section for On a Magical Night, a film which sees her equal Louis Garrel's record of half a dozen stints in front of the camera for Honoré. The cast is rounded out by Vincent Lacoste (who returns from Honoré's previous film Sorry Angel), the excellent Camille Cottin, Benjamin Biolay, plus some serious star power in the form of the welcome presence of Carole Bouquet, who doesn't make enough films these days.
Mastroianni's Maria has been married to Richard (Biolay) for 20 years, and the couple have now hit a wall in their relationship. Following a major argument, Maria moves out of their apartment, but doesn't go very far - in fact, she checks in to the hotel directly across the street from the marital home. From her room in the hotel, she can watch Benjamin moping around in the aftermath of their row; the particular room Maria's holed up in - 212 - carries significance, as its number is shared by a section of civil code which outlines spousal obligations. So far, so straightforward, but events take a strange turn when Maria is visited by a ghost from the past in the form of the young Richard (Lacoste). From this younger version of her husband, Maria learns all about Richard's first love Irène (Cottin), who soon joins the couple in the hotel room. Like Richard, Irène has also turned the clock back, and appears to be the age she was when she and Richard were in a relationship. All of this gives the initially baffled Maria - who remains her actual age throughout - plenty to think about as she considers both the state of her marriage and her next move.
As a studio-bound affair featuring just a handful of actors, On a Magical Night could quite easily be a play (and Honoré is no stranger to theatre), yet at no point does it feel stagey. While much of the action takes place in the hotel room, Honoré lets his film breathe via a late seaside scene and, most memorably, the road which separates Maria's hotel and apartment. Shots of this avenue play a big part in creating the film's wonderfully rich atmosphere; as the snow begins to fall on this quiet street - which prominently features a seven-screen cinema - the beauty of the mise-en-scène is something to behold. However, the icy spectacle also serves to remind us that Richard and Maria are in the winter of their relationship, and it's going to take a mighty big snow shovel to dig them out of it.
While there isn't a weak link among the small cast, and Mastroianni is as good as we've come to expect, it's actually Camille Cottin who steals every scene she's in; since starting off in a series of two-minute sketches for TV, Cottin has racked up an impressive list of film credits and has shown that she has range beyond comedy, with her turn as a no-nonsense detective in Iris proving how good she can be in a serious dramatic role. While On a Magical Night certainly falls on the lighter side of drama and has some gently humorous moments, Cottin expertly brings out the pathos in her character, yet is always ready to utilise her impeccable comic timing when required. But to focus exclusively on Cottin would be to do a disservice to Honoré and the rest of his fine cast, who have here created an atmospheric, intelligent and engaging work, one which could even be said to be rather - ahem - magical.
