Hors Satan

HORS SATAN

Director : Bruno Dumont

Year : 2013

Genre : Drama

Rating : *1/2



As a critic, I like to think that I have an open mind to all genres of movie and that I will watch absolutely anything once.  But sometimes a film comes along that really tries my patience and within 10 minutes of it starting, I know what my conclusions of it will be. 2 years ago it was Jean - Luc Gordard's snobbish 'Film Socialisme' and this year it is 'Hors Satan' a painfully boring, pretentious piece of metaphysical twaddle that makes Andy Warhols 8 hour snooze fest 'Empire' look like a rip roaring, heart racing epic. With not a relatable character in sight, long shots of nothingness and a confusing and empty ending, 'Hors Satan' is a mind numbing film that I was fighting to stay awake through from beginning to end.

'Hors Satan' is a supposed religiously inflected fable that tells the story of a young girls obsession with a mysterious drifter. Throughout the film, we see this drifter shooting animals, killing humans and performing miracles such as reviving a little girl who has suffered a seizure. Added to this a completely unnecessary graphic sex scene with a woman who has the hairiest arm pits known to man.

Bruno Dumont is well known for his strange branch of films which border the realistic and avant garde scene. Winner of multiple Palme D'ors as well as the FIPRESCI prize for his 2009 film 'Hadewijch', Dumont is one of the best loved and respected art house directors working in French cinema today. I haven't seen any of his other films and based on 'Hors Satan' I won't be tracking them down any time soon either. His directing style shown in 'Hors Satan' is a painfully dull exercise, over utilising long establishing shots with characters walking from one side of the frame to the other. Mixed into these tedious moments, Dumont includes scenes of surprising violence and subtext which flew right over my head. Maybe the film has a deeper meaning in it's native country but to me, a 21 year old born in the West Midlands of England, 'Hors Satan' is nothing than an arty waste of an hour and a half that has it's nose sticking miles into the atmosphere. Much like the films of Todd Solondz.

It would be almost unfair to criticise the acting in this film because there is so little dialogue, narrative arcs or backstory. Characterisations are virtually nil and the actors walk around with emotionless faces, even in the presence of extreme violence. They seem to care about the film as much as I did, which is not at all and all the actors walk around the seemingly endless countryside looking for something to do. There are no stars in 'Hors Satan' and that makes it just that little bit harder to gravitate towards the performances or the action on screen. I understand that Dumont is trying to make the characters relatable by not using well known faces, but the lack of dialogue, emotion or plot completely alienates the audience from the narrative of the story. In the end, the actors are what we see on screen and when they look just a bored as I did, that's not a good sign.

While the film is filled with beautiful countryside, sweeping shots of forests and lakes and a side of France we rarely see in motion pictures, 'Hors Satan' is a pointless, vacuous, overblown, pretentious, boring, plodding and arty piece of tosh that has ideas way above it's head. At first, I thought I was too dumb to understand it but I soon realised that the movie itself doesn't understand what it is trying to achieve. For what it is an hour and a half movie, 'Hors Satan' is one of the longest slogs I've ever had to endure while watching a film. Never has the best part of 2 hours seemed like 5.