CAST
The Guy: David Dewaele
Her: Alexandra Lemâtre
The Gard: Christophe Bon
The Small Girl: JulietteBacquet
GENRE
Drama
DISTRIBUTOR
New Yorker Films
RUNNING TIME 110’
PRODUCTION France, 2011
RATING Not Rated
GAUGE 35mm, DVD
“Maddening, pretentious, hypnotic and transcendent in roughly equal measure,
Dumont's minimalist study of an oddball poacher and the farm girl who keeps him
company contains only a dozen "dramatic" events, but they all register indelibly,
such is the director's talent for making the minor appear momentous - and maybe
religious.”
Rob Nelson, Variety.
A mysterious poacher—who may be the Devil, an avenging angel, or
perhaps Christ himself—is the central figure of Bruno Dumont’s
transcendent look at sinners and saints, one of the themes explored in his
previous film, Hadewijch (2009). An unnamed man engages in several
near-wordless rituals: He knocks on a door, receives a sandwich, prays,
then sets out on a long walk with a young woman. Set in the Nord-Pasde-
Calais region in northern France, where Dumont grew up, Hors Satan
is a film of extraordinary widescreen compositions; it was shot by the
director’s frequent collaborator, the cinematographer Yves Cape. Like many
of Dumont’s movie, Hors Satan concerns landscape—the dunes, marshes,
hills, and valleys of this hamlet near the English Channel—as much as it
does spirituality. Possessed with supernatural powers, Dewaele’s
character, as we discover, commits mostly acts of beneficence. But he’s
also capable of carrying out horrific violence. Deliberately ambiguous,
Hors Satan asks us to consider the repercussions of evil committed in the
name of good and vice versa.
The Tournées Festival
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