Oh Kate & Bruno...

Vacancy(dir. Nimrod Antal)
This is a thriller that is actually thrilling. It starts off creepily even if it was predictable. The atmosphere almost had a smutty feel to it like the snuff films that they watch. The film starts to lose it's energy the longer it went on and almost felt repetitive due to it's constrictive setting, but thankfully, the filmmakers decided to keep the movie on the short side (85 mins.) and not keep it going until eventually it lost all it's steam and become an absolute bore. Kate Beckinsale's character acted like an idiot most of the time, which was pretty frustrating. Luke Wilson's character surviving the whole ordeal was pretty ludicrious, but I'm willing to accept it because after all, it's a genre film. Portraying the ordeal as almost an alternative to couple's therapy wasn't all that off-putting because it was totally expected. I thought it was good.
*** out of ****
L'Humanite(dir. Bruno Dumont)
The shock imagery that he displayed in The Life of Jesus compared to some of the stuff in this was relatively tame in comparision. I understand the first shocking image to a certain extent because you could justify that it was showing the audience the ugliness of the crime, but the sex scenes and one particular scene seemed totally unnecessary and just seemed like a director trying to provoke the audience with shock imagery. I don't like that one bit especially with a particular scene almost derailing the whole film because it just seemed so distasteful. The main female character offers her body to the main character and after that incident, a shot of the woman's vagina is shown for a good length of time while the character cries. Some critics said it was to show how the main character views sex after the horrific crime, but that's no excuse for it's gratuitous and distasteful nature. The character wasn't even involved in that scene to make it seem that's what it's purpose was. It was a private moment for that particular character. The main character has some beautiful moments and some off-puttingly awkward ones. The character is an awkward one in the first place, but having him employing a homoerotic way of handling supects just seemed ridiculous especially at the end where he french kisses the man responsible for the horrific crime. Roger Ebert says these scenes are to show the audience that the character is becoming mad because of the crime. I think there is too much emphasis on the crime from most of the reviews I've read. It was probably as or even more horrific for the main character as it was for the audience to have to see, but I don't think his whole life and how he handles people were totally affected by it. The character is slow and almost seems like a grown man that is still at a child's mental and emotional capacity. He is quiet and almost displays a sense of spirituality, but he's no saint. He's an idiot. Critics say he's trying to carry the world's suffering on his shoulders, but is he really? The characters feels like a reject out of a Bresson film. There is also a tidbit thrown around that he used to have a girlfriend and a baby and it's almost used as an excuse for the way he behaves. He just seems like a man stunted not by his experiences in life, but by nature. That doesn't mean he's not an intriguing character, but when he starts doing something as strange as sniffing a suspect's hair and face, it just becomes really awkward and feels totally unnatural in the context of his character. It feels like an attempt to shock the audience. Dumont said in the interview on the DVD that he wants to confront the viewer, but I think there's much subtler ways to do that and I think he actually employs some of the subtler ways in this film, but he also ends up employing overly obvious ways of confronting the audience. The Life of Jesus proved that subtlety was more mysterious and rewarding than being confrontational. It's interesting to listen to Bruno Dumont trying to explain his view on life and film and not being able to really articulate it. It doesn't mean he's a bad director or person just because he's not very articulate on his method or his views on life, but it's interesting coming from a man that was a philosophy teacher, who you would think would be able to articulate his ideas more clearly. I'm not judging the film by his interview, but it kind of makes you think about the film in a different light because he might not be entirely sure of what he is doing, which makes it easier to stomach that he might not realize that his imagery is shocking or gratuitous, but in the context of this film, it seems obvious that he knows exactly what he's doing. It was a mixed bag artistically. The Life of Jesus is definately way better.
**1/2 out of ****