The aspirant nun Céline van Hadewijch is invited to leave the convent where she studies and she returns to the house of her parents in Paris. Céline meets her outcast Muslim teenage friend ...
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Bruno Dumont follows up the controversial Twentynine Palms with this tale of a group of young soldiers who go off to war and experience some life-changing events. Flandres won the Grand Prix Prize at the 2006 Cannes Film Festival.
Director:
Bruno Dumont
Stars:
Adélaïde Leroux,
Samuel Boidin,
Henri Cretel
David, an independent photographer, and Katia, an unemployed woman, leave Los Angeles, en route to the southern California desert, where they search a natural set to use as a backdrop for a... See full summary »
A social movie about current life in the north of France. Freddy and his friends are all unemployed. They pass away time by wandering around on their motorcycles and by directing their ... See full summary »
Director:
Bruno Dumont
Stars:
David Douche,
Marjorie Cottreel,
Kader Chaatouf
When an 11-year-old girl is brutally raped and murdered in a quiet French village, a police detective who has forgotten how to feel emotions--because of the death of his own family in some kind of accident--investigates the crime, which turns out to ask more questions than it answers.
Director:
Bruno Dumont
Stars:
Emmanuel Schotté,
Séverine Caneele,
Philippe Tullier
Winter, 1915. Confined by her family to an asylum in the South of France - where she will never sculpt again - the chronicle of Camille Claudel's reclusive life, as she waits for a visit from her brother, Paul Claudel.
Director:
Bruno Dumont
Stars:
Juliette Binoche,
Jessica Errero,
Alexandra Lucas
France, 1425. In the midst of the Hundred Years' War, the young Jeannette, at the still tender age of 8, looks after her sheep in the small village of Domremy. One day, she tells her friend... See full summary »
Director:
Bruno Dumont
Stars:
Lise Leplat Prudhomme,
Jeanne Voisin,
Lucile Gauthier
Summer 1910. Several tourists have vanished while relaxing on the beautiful beaches of the Channel Coast. Infamous inspectors Machin and Malfoy soon gather that the epicenter of these ... See full summary »
In the 15th century, both France and England stake a blood claim for the French throne. Believing that God had chosen her, the young Joan (Lise Leplat Prudhomme) leads the army of the King ... See full summary »
Director:
Bruno Dumont
Stars:
Fabrice Luchini,
Lise Leplat Prudhomme,
Antoine Douchet
Quinquin is now a grown-up and goes by the nickname CoinCoin. He hangs out on the Côte D'Opale and attends meetings of the Nationalist Party with his childhood friend Fatso. His old love, ... See full summary »
Stars:
Alane Delhaye,
Bernard Pruvost,
Philippe Jore
The aspirant nun Céline van Hadewijch is invited to leave the convent where she studies and she returns to the house of her parents in Paris. Céline meets her outcast Muslim teenage friend Yassine Chikh in a café and they hang around together. Céline tells that he is only her friend since she is committed with God and will stay virgin since her body belongs to God. Yassine introduces Céline to his older brother and religious leader Nassir Chikh and he invites the teenage girl to participate in his religious seminars. However, Nassir is actually a terrorist and the confused Céline is the perfect tool for his cell.Written by
Claudio Carvalho, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
The French film magazine 'Cahiers du cinéma' included Hadewijch (2009) in their Top 10 list for 2009 as No.10. See more »
Soundtracks
L'art de la Fugue
interpreted from La Mathilde
composed by Johann Sebastian Bach
performed by Elliot Simon, Guillaume Pera, Julien Jadczak, Olivier Boulanger & Yoan Bassinet See more »
Celine is a young novitiate nun who is sent out of the nunnery by her Mother Superior because she is too full of self-love, is too extremist, mistakes abstinence for martyrdom, she needs to test her faith in the real world. Everything she goes through is an attempt to get closer to God. Her novitiate name is Hadewijch, after the 13th century mystic. She's seen at home in the Ile Saint Loue, in a lavish dwelling in modern day Paris with her dog, lounging about or strolling through the corridors and rooms of her affluent parent's, her father a minister, her mother detached, Celine seems alienated. She meets Yassine, a young street thief from the projects, who takes her to a punk concert and realizes she's not interested in sex with him. She pledges herself to Christ and has the mystic's desire to draw closer to His body. Yassine thinks(rightly?)she's nuts, being the only normal person(and very funny)in the story. When she puts her head on his shoulder, he asks does she want love? Dumont does not explore her character: how she became so religious, the roots of her antagonism with her father.Celine is infatuated with God.
She attends a church where Bach is being played by a quartet and is uplifted by it. Sokolowski's face filled with an inner radiance.Yassine breaks the law, steals a motor-bike and goes through red lights with Celine on the back. He introduces her to his older brother Nassir, who is a devout Muslim, and gives talks in the back of a kebab shop about Islamic belief. He can't understand why she suffers for the 'love' of God, she 'must act if you have faith...continue the creator's work'. He says 'innocence' doesn't exist in a democracy, where people vote but take no responsibility. God is a 'sword for truth and justice'. He takes her to an Arabic country to see the humiliation inflicted. She meets a group of terrorists. She declares herself 'with' Nassir, saying she's 'ready' to fight the cause as a way of getting closer to God. We are given to understand she plants a bomb in Paris. There is a street explosion, she travels below on a tube train with Nassir. We take it she was the 'chosen' one. Police go to the convent to ask her questions, but she escapes, pursued by the demons of self-doubt, in the absence of God.
Celine torments herself in her search for God. Julie Sokolowski embodies the ingenue otherworldliness and childlike candour of Celine, with a wan-faced pallor, a bodily awkwardness, suggesting her vulnerability. Her fear that she has paid too high a price, feeling no closer to God, for her actions. Dumont's camera is usually at head height and fairly close up, moving through landscapes in long shots. David, a shirtless Mason and convict on parole who has been working in the convent grounds, comes to play a major part in Celine's salvation as a form of embodied grace. In a world without God there is still the need for the sacred and the spiritual. Dumont shows various forms of fanaticism merging. God is in the humanity of our ordinary, modern world. Dumont takes us on a journey with Celine, the film as mystical act, a poem not to be interpreted at face value, with surrealistic ellipses and lacunae, reason breaking down, we take things on faith. Dumont makes us empathise with Celine. The ending is a problem, instead of signing off with an act of terrorism, Dumont brings in a miraculous climax, the coda a mystery of love, to send you out the door with too many questions in your head. Disturbing, haunting, cathartic.
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Celine is a young novitiate nun who is sent out of the nunnery by her Mother Superior because she is too full of self-love, is too extremist, mistakes abstinence for martyrdom, she needs to test her faith in the real world. Everything she goes through is an attempt to get closer to God. Her novitiate name is Hadewijch, after the 13th century mystic. She's seen at home in the Ile Saint Loue, in a lavish dwelling in modern day Paris with her dog, lounging about or strolling through the corridors and rooms of her affluent parent's, her father a minister, her mother detached, Celine seems alienated. She meets Yassine, a young street thief from the projects, who takes her to a punk concert and realizes she's not interested in sex with him. She pledges herself to Christ and has the mystic's desire to draw closer to His body. Yassine thinks(rightly?)she's nuts, being the only normal person(and very funny)in the story. When she puts her head on his shoulder, he asks does she want love? Dumont does not explore her character: how she became so religious, the roots of her antagonism with her father.Celine is infatuated with God.
She attends a church where Bach is being played by a quartet and is uplifted by it. Sokolowski's face filled with an inner radiance.Yassine breaks the law, steals a motor-bike and goes through red lights with Celine on the back. He introduces her to his older brother Nassir, who is a devout Muslim, and gives talks in the back of a kebab shop about Islamic belief. He can't understand why she suffers for the 'love' of God, she 'must act if you have faith...continue the creator's work'. He says 'innocence' doesn't exist in a democracy, where people vote but take no responsibility. God is a 'sword for truth and justice'. He takes her to an Arabic country to see the humiliation inflicted. She meets a group of terrorists. She declares herself 'with' Nassir, saying she's 'ready' to fight the cause as a way of getting closer to God. We are given to understand she plants a bomb in Paris. There is a street explosion, she travels below on a tube train with Nassir. We take it she was the 'chosen' one. Police go to the convent to ask her questions, but she escapes, pursued by the demons of self-doubt, in the absence of God.
Celine torments herself in her search for God. Julie Sokolowski embodies the ingenue otherworldliness and childlike candour of Celine, with a wan-faced pallor, a bodily awkwardness, suggesting her vulnerability. Her fear that she has paid too high a price, feeling no closer to God, for her actions. Dumont's camera is usually at head height and fairly close up, moving through landscapes in long shots. David, a shirtless Mason and convict on parole who has been working in the convent grounds, comes to play a major part in Celine's salvation as a form of embodied grace. In a world without God there is still the need for the sacred and the spiritual. Dumont shows various forms of fanaticism merging. God is in the humanity of our ordinary, modern world. Dumont takes us on a journey with Celine, the film as mystical act, a poem not to be interpreted at face value, with surrealistic ellipses and lacunae, reason breaking down, we take things on faith. Dumont makes us empathise with Celine. The ending is a problem, instead of signing off with an act of terrorism, Dumont brings in a miraculous climax, the coda a mystery of love, to send you out the door with too many questions in your head. Disturbing, haunting, cathartic.