TWENTYNINE PALMS
Reviewed by: Harvey S. Karten
Grade: B
Wellspring
Directed by: Bruno Dumont
Written by: Bruno Dumont
Cast: David Wissak, Katia Golubeva
Screened at: Preview 9, NYC, 3/30/04
So you dread going on a long vacation by car because the two
kids sitting in the back seat will keep asking, "Are we there yet?"
when they're not poking and provoking each other and whining to
you and your spouse? That already sounds more like the worst
kind of drudge work, hardly a holiday. So you decide to leave the
kids with their grandparents and go off yourselves, just the two of
you a blissful second honeymoon. Guess again. You're going
to want those kids along just to distract you, but all this is not to
say that your time off with your significant other is devoid of
blissful moments. There are many of these beatific if transient
periods embraced by David (David Wissak) and Katia (Katia
Golubeva), at the front and center of Bruno Dumont's
challenging, even intoxicating moments. Part allegory, as is the
wont of desert-based films (like Gus Van Sant's "Gerry"),
"Twentynine Palms" could be called a road-and-buddy movie if it
had any relation whatever to adolescent comedies like Todd
Phillips's
Road Trip" (a college student has to head of an incriminating
videotape accidentally sent to his girlfriend). Instead, we're
watching the behavior of two people in close contact for several
days, boxed together claustrophobically in a Hummer while
paradoxically traversing the endless miles on a California desert
road about as open a setting as you'll get this side of the
Sahara.
With several situations shown to us by photographer Georges
Lechaptois in real time, "Twentynine Palms" allows us to
eavesdrop on an American who is presumably looking for
locations for a shoot (albeit without any photographic equipment
in sight), and who is traveling with a loved one, a Russian or East
European who speaks French. Each has about enough
understanding of the other's language to know when, say, the
woman wants an ice cream cone, but even if language gets in
the way of their filiation, they would have trouble communicating.
For example, David asks whether the ice cream is good,
receiving Katia's answer, "It's good." Moments later she replies
"It's not good," which presumably bewilders us in the audience as
much as it irritates David with its apparent, though not
necessarily invalid logic. (For example, if the ice cream cone
tastes bad but fills a hungry stomach, is the cone good or bad?)
Dumont provides considerable humor in what becomes a
mighty classy tale of terror, with two moments in the last twenty
minutes particularly jarring as they take place amid a road trip
which, despite occasional, understandable bickering, is not only a
largely serene outing but one which permits no small number of
literally orgasmic moments. As David and Katia proceed,
stopping at motels along the desolate way, they couple
ecstatically in the rooms, out on the desert, and in the swimming
pool inhabited by them alone. Their cries at the climactic
moments are not entirely different from the shouts of couples
similarly having sex, particularly in some of the comedies shown
on the American screens during the past few years. In fact,
some in the audience will likely laugh, unintentionally and
perhaps with embarrassment, upon hearing David's wails, which
sound consistent with someone in pain. (We've seen movies
about little kids, say, six or seven years old, who upon hearing
their parents' shouting in the next room, bed springs creaking,
wonder why daddy is hurting mommy tonight.)
Aha. This brings us to interpret the director's intentions.
Dumont shows us the thin line that often separates extreme joy
from pain, and love from hate. We've all known toddlers who
can turn from the giggles into "Daddy I hate you" instantaneously
and infants who can cry, smile laugh, and cry again all within a
minute. Dumont is showing us that we adults are not that
different from kiddies after all.
"Twentynine Palms," then is about two adults who are in love
despite, or maybe even because their native languages are
different, who can turn their love to momentary dislike, even hate,
when provoked by allegedly illogical conversation or, in the case
of the dog who is hit by the lovers' vehicle, by the woman's
thinking her partner's lack of interest in the mutt's injury is
appalling. We can't blame David for wondering about his
girlfriend's logic when she praises the cropped haircuts of
Marines but jokingly threatens to leave him is he should adopt
the style, nor can we fail to imagine Dumont's glee if he
surreptitiously sat in the audience to calculate the expressions of
people who, sitting with a congregation of like-minded citizens
rather than at home with the TV, might be embarrassed at
watching the many soft-core pornographic scenes.
What is Dumont about? Let me quote from my own review of
his "Humanite," released in 2001 and available on the 'net at
http://imdb.com, because the themes are parallel..."'Humanite' Is
about nothing less than life and death, sex and violence, pity and
tragedy, in short, about what makes us living human beings.
Like Bresson, Dumont is a philosopher with a camera who films
('The Life of Jesus' for example), contain only the bare essentials
that he wants to explore, and he explores this limited material
with a rigorous attention to detail. He mimes Bresson in avoiding
beautiful images in favor of 'necessary' ones, and like Bresson
he has no use for highly skilled, professional, celebrity actors."
While I can't be as ecstatic over the film as my colleague, Ed
Gonzalez of Slant magazine ("A gem...a love poem to the way we
look at the world"), I admire Dumont, who successfully shuns
Hollywood cliches, avoiding extensive foreshadowing of events,
and successfully opens up what is at base a theatrical piece
involving two people.
Not Yet Rated. 119 minutes.(c) 2004 by Harvey Karten at
Harveycritic@cs.com
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