David O'ConnellMIFF 2011: Outside Satan
July 27th 2011 01:35
Frenchman Bruno Dumont does nothing to dissuade common perception of him as a “difficult” director. His latest, Outside Satan, is a perplexing, at times infuriatingly cryptic venture into a remote rural environment inhabited by a nameless man (David Dewaele), a drifter who lives in the nearby dunes, and a young woman (Alexandra Lematre) who spends much of her time with him. Does she idolise him? Is she in love him? What is their connection? The answers don't exactly come thick and fast.
In an early scene, the man takes a shotgun to a farm and with a single blow takes down an old man. This seemingly random act of violence is shockingly raw, eliciting no emotional reaction from either. Later we learn that the old man was the woman’s abusive stepfather, making her in debt to the drifter.
The woman follows the man around, their day to day activities incredibly uneventful against the barren, wind-lashed environment. Further acts of violence follow before finally a miraculous occurrence and an equally miraculous deflection of guilt. What does it all mean?
Dumont uses stillness like an assault on the senses; scene after scene lingers in a state of limbo, using minimal dialogue if any. The few verbal markers we’re gifted offer little to counter our lack of resistance against the static takes. In time there are strange inferences of powers, almost supernatural in nature, attributable to the man. In the end most audience members – those who haven’t succumbed to sleep – won’t give a toss.
And yet, oblique and impenetrable as Outside Satan (2011) undoubtedly is, something about it lingers. Perhaps it’s the sheer audacity of creating something as deliberately incomprehensible as this. But more than that, the two leads undeniably play a part; both have incredibly “interesting" faces that I never tired of looking at. It doesn’t erase the frustration created by Dumont’s relentless evasion of any conventional narrative, but it did prevent me from hating the film.
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