Bruno Dumont takes an incredibly operatic premise — an invasion of our planet by interstellar forces that represent themselves as, fundamentally, Good and Evil — while setting it in an absolutely ordinary place, a French seaside town where nothing out of the ordinary could happen. There’s room for lightsabers, explosions and forbidden love, and a vision of the apocalypse that’s as satirical as it is amusing.
Bruno Dumont’s reserves of imagination seem to be inexhaustible and a renewable energy. L’Empire, winner of the 2024 Jury Prize at the Berlinale, seeks to somehow retake the successful strategy of P’tit Quinquin (2014) and the sequel Coincoin et les Z’inhumains (2018) which deconstructed the crime and mystery thriller genre, set in the peaceful region of Pas-de-Calais, requesting local inhabitants for their characters. Dumont realizes that the fusion between burlesque (or “typically” French) with universes coded by genre cinema are a source of comedy. But more than that. This kind of “gallic version” of Star Wars ends up pushing the burlesque to its limits, as if telling us that seriousness begins only when the foundations of science fiction’s verisimilitude crack and when everything is taken less seriously. Perhaps only then can good finally glimpse victory against evil. Or its opposite. (Carlos Natálio).
