‘The Empire’ Review: Bruno Dumont’s Self-Consciously Daft Sci-Fi Bauble Isn’t Quite as Amusing as It Thinks
variety.comJessica Kiang It is increasingly weird to recall that for a while, French director Bruno Dumont was the kind of filmmaker who reminded you, often forcibly and somewhat against your will, that the word “auteur” contains most of the letters of “austere.” “The Empire,” another of the director’s proudly off-kilter comedies that pitches the bumbling denizens of a small French village into a vast, sinister conspiracy extending far beyond their foreshortened horizons, hovers several light years — and two janky light sabers — away from austerity.
Unfortunately, though, the air out there is also a little thin on hilarity, with the film’s one-gag setup becoming stretched to the point that it doesn’t even matter that it’s a pretty good gag.
The humor, as ever with the Dumont of “Li’l Quinquin” and “Slack Bay,” derives largely from the collision of the grandiose with the drolly mundane.
This time out, harking back to, but confusingly not quite reprising, the premise of his 2018 TV miniseries “Coincoin and the Extra-Humans” the same coastal village featured in “Quinquin” and “Coincoin” is the inexplicable locus for an alien invasion.
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