Outside Satan
Director: Bruno Dumont
Year Released: 2011
Rating: 3.0
A drifter (David Dewaele) roams the French countryside with a young woman (Alexandra Lematre) and when he isn't murdering her step-dad with a shotgun, he's curing a sickly girl from what is probably demonic possession. In typical Dumont fashion, fundamentally Christian concepts are twisted and distorted, and the Dewaele figure is an absolute contradiction and enigma (somewhat like the Terence Stamp character in Pasolini's Teorema) - he's eventually arrested, but is soon seen walking away from the police station, inexplicably a free man. The presentation (as always with Dumont) is idiosyncratic - lots of shots of walking aimlessly, lots of shots of nature (in all its complexity and duality, as a thing of beauty and a thing of horror) - and there's no denying Dumont's absolute dead-seriousness with regard to his subject matter: he's one of the most original and confounding filmmakers presently working.
