‘The Empire’ Review: A Simultaneously Zany and Inert Reworking of the Sci-Fi Space Opera
Kino Lorber
Pas-de-Calais holds considerable significance for auteur Bruno Dumont: Not only was he born there, but most of his nearly thirty-year-career spanning filmography has been shot in the region, which is characterized by serene fishing villages and invigorating sea breezes from the bordering English Channel. For Dumont's latest work, the 2024 Berlin Film Festival Competition title The Empire (L'Empire), Pas-de-Calais is suddenly transformed into an intergalactic battleground between the omnipotent forces of good and evil. A totally kooky sci-fi genre exercise that serves as an outlier in his varied body of work, The Empire operates as an impressively crafted but frustratingly flat entry from the celebrated French filmmaker.
Mixing space opera elements á la Star Wars with the naturalistic tones reminiscent of French cinema traditions, The Empire has Dumont's fingerprints all over it: his off-beat humor blends with explorations of mortal craving and experience. However, this unusual approach culminates with a film that feels rather emotionally hollow as a whole despite an intriguingly unique narrative that, from its grandiloquent veneer, promises more peculiar pleasure than it ultimately delivers.
The Empire transports its audience to the picturesque townlet of Audresselles, Pas-de-Calais, where the blue-collar community busies itself with the ins and outs of everyday life under the blazing midsummer sun. Little do the citizens of Audresselles know a child with the power to unleash ultimate evil upon Earth has just been born amongst them. Known as "the Wain," the baby becomes the fixation of two opposing alien races with unattended business on our planet. The Zeros are a hostile faction wishing to protect the Wain's threat to humankind, overseen by the nutty Beelzebub, King of Darkness (frequent Dumont-collaborator Fabrice Luchini). Their intergalactic enemies are the Ones, led by the Queen of the Empire of Good (Camille Cottin), intending to understand humanity and help Earth's population reach its full potential. The Ones pursue a mission to destroy the Wain before he can unlock his total force.
On the ground, the Zeros and Ones both have detachments operating in human forms to complete their increasingly urgent tasks. Jony (newcomer Brandon Vlieghe) first appears as a simple fisherman and the father of the Wain but is, in fact, possessed by a knight of the Zeros, employed to guard the evil infant in service to the King of Darkness. The longer Jony spends on Earth, the more he is distracted by the carnal pleasures it supplies. His foremost foe is Jane (Anamaria Vartolome, Happening, Mickey 17), a princess of the One Empire, loyal to her Queen's mission of saving humanity and destroying the Wain before it is too late. Like Jony, Jane's time among the Earth-dwellers begins to divert her focus and push her towards unexpected desires of the flesh. As the Wain's destiny bounces back and forth between the rival factions, the Zeros and Ones embark on an all-out battle assembled on the foundational powers of good and evil.
Kino Lorber
Despite this fantastical setup, The Empire seems reticent to explore its genre-mashing approach with compelling energy. Utilizing a motley of some of French cinema's most promising talents with non-professionals (a Dumont staple), the film's dulled script clouds the actors with a plainness that might be amusing in terms of the director's sensibility—or French views of comedy—that could get lost in translation for broader audiences. This peculiar drabness shadows the film's most humanistic touches, possibly conveying Dumont's personal pessimism about the actual state of the world without ever delivering a convincing message that feels more satisfying from a viewer's perspective.
The Empire is most engrossing in the tension it creates between its French setting and the intergalactic confrontation at the heart of its narrative. Vast vistas of the seaswept landscapes of Audresselles hold the camera's interest with particular reverence, signaling the director's fascination with the area and its paisan population, Boulonnais horses, and all. While human tribulations are never a focal point of The Empire's advancement (excluding brief cameos from Li’l Quinquin’s bumbling detectives), their reality garners intriguing attention from the sidelines. When the Queen of the Ones descends to Earth, she possesses the body of the town mayor, feigning interest in the issues of the citizens that she hears as she meanders through the village. Though the movie does not draw weighty attention to such interactions, Dumont's inclusion of such exchanges speaks to the disunion between the working class and governing power systems. With more sharp intention, The Empire's rendition of spacecraft cleverly nods to France's historical structures of power: The Zero's ship reproduces Versailles (monarchy), and the One's resembles Sainte-Chapelle (church).
While The Empire's bland evolution and disheveled world-building often feel sluggish, the movie's impeccable crafting and use of visual effects cannot be discounted. Dumont's synthesis of the space opera genre and verité practices feels like an idiosyncratic achievement for his filmmaking style, particularly since much of his previous work has been much more grounded in the real world. The movie experiments with scale in impressive ways, frequently showcasing the slightness of the human form compared to its vast surroundings, whether the coastal landscape or the monumental spaceships of the film's extraterrestrial entities. This link between the ordinary and the extraordinary serves as one of The Empire's standout features.
Kino Lorber
Since The Empire's world premiere at the Berlinale last year, where Dumont was awarded the Silver Bear Jury Prize, reactions to the film have been wide-ranging, to say the least. Love it or hate it (Dumont is likely open to either response), The Empire feels like a refreshed—albeit muted—rehashing of the timeless clash between good and evil, a cinematic preoccupation that has existed since long before Star Wars.
3/5
2024 | 1hr 51min | Color | French with English subtitles
'The Empire' begins its U.S. theatrical release on Friday, March 7, with distribution from Kino Lorber. Click here to find showtimes near you.