Gratuitious shots of intimate body parts or A.R.T? (L'Humanite (DVD))

Name: violentviolet

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Product:	L'Humanite (DVD)
Date:	26.09.00 (141 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Beautifully shot, powerful, disturbing - leaves a real impression

Disadvantages: Just a bit too long

L'Humanite, recent winner of the Cannes film festival, is not an easy film to categorise. Right from the outset you have a sense that this is a film which could only have been made outside Hollywood. The best way to describe it is as an anti-detective movie: the lead character is a hopeless Superintendant in a French backwater, haunted by the horrific rape and murder of an 11 year old girl. One of the film's opening shots shows her mutilated vagina. Is this a justifiable part of the plot or just for shock value? A little of both.

Although the film is undoubtably beautifully shot, what little plot there is moves forward at an incredibly slow pace. The point that's trying to be made is that despite the impression given by most TV cop shows, investigating brutal crimes is anything but glamourous and exciting: life continues to move forward in its usual uneventful fashion. The film almost managed to hold my attention without being bored (I should add I'm a pretty patient person - if you've read Ulysses from start to finish you have to be) but in the end, 2 and a half hours is just too much.

Having said that, I think the mark of a good book or film is if it makes a strong enough impression on you that you replay it in your mind afterwards. According to this criteria, L'humanite made the grade. It's nice to see films that don't just follow the Hollywood formula can still get made (even if only in France...)

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