Stephen Holden's breezy but as usual well-written and thoughtful review of Bruno Dumont's latest film to come to the USA -
L'il Quinquin - makes one or maybe two small but significant slips. He says that the film is set in the extreme northwest of France, which would put it in Brittany - le "Far-Ouest"- a place of Celtic sensibility. However, one of the significant elements of all of Dumont's work - with the exception of the Camille Claudel film - is that his work emerges almost organically from the North - the area of Northeastern France where he is from: Ballileul, Dunkerque, Douai, Lille-Roubaix-Tourcoing. The region is the Nord-Pas-de-Calais - part of French Flanders - that means a few things: life in small towns in this area hangs between the rural and the urban, the industrial and the agricultural creating a gritty often grimy entanglement of a peasant's hard-nosed look at life cut with a working-class sense of struggle. It is also the place of carnival where larger-than life giant puppets that come out for the raucous festivities; a time when conventional hierarchies and decorum are thrown over as the kings and queens of the carnival throw caution to the wind, usurp power, and engage in lustful riotous acts. Lastly, this region has a sense and history of incorporating the grotesque/macabre into its artwork - the deepest carnal instincts flare up in all kinds of ordinary situations. J'attends avec plaisir la sortie du film.
Alane Delhaye and Lucy Caron
