The Life of Jesus, Bruno Dumont’s 1997 debut, paints a disturbingly bleak portrait of alienation through the story of Freddie (David Douche), an epileptic skinhead who spends his listless days driving his motorcycle around his rural town, dispassionately screwing his grocery store clerk girlfriend Marie (Marjorie Cottreel), and taking out his latent hostility toward life on an Arab teen named Kader (Kader Chaatouf) who flirts with Marie. Dumont shoots his disquieting film – its characters long on menace but woefully short on Christ-like benevolence or compassion – with cool detachment, alternating between stark close-ups and long shots in which people appear tiny amidst the expansive countryside. The director doesn’t judge these wayward boys despite their increasingly horrifying actions; instead, Dumont uses his intently watchful camera (and the constant sound of birds chirping, an allusion to Freddie’s caged finch) to elicit truths about the racism, hatred and violence that lurk beneath the surface of rural communities. Though one occasionally wishes the director would provide more than oblique glances into his impenetrable characters’ frightening, mysterious hearts, The Life of Jesus’ unforgettable images – Freddie and his apathetic friends wasting away outside in the sweltering heat, the boys’ brutally blunt crime – ultimately form a harrowing vision of volatile youth bored to death.
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