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Twentynine Palms

France, United States, Germany

2003

114 Min
Color
2.35:1
English, French
  • Currently 3.3/5 Stars.
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DIR Bruno Dumont

EXEC Muriel Merlin

PROD Rachid Bouchareb, Jean Bréhat

SCR Bruno Dumont

DP Georges Lechaptois

CAST Yekaterina Golubeva, David Wissak

ED Dominique Petrot

MUSIC Richard Cuvillier

SOUND Philippe Lecoeur

Toronto (Visions), Venice (Competition), London (French Revolutions), Melbourne (International Panorama), Rotterdam (Main Programme), Mar del Plata (Point of View), Göteborg

Synopsis

David, an independent photographer, and Katia, an unemployed woman, leave Los Angeles, en route to the southern California desert, where they search for a natural set to use as a backdrop for a magazine photo shoot. They find a motel in the town of Twentynine Palms and spend their days in their sport-utility vehicle, discovering the Joshua Tree Desert, and losing themselves on nameless roads and trails. Frantically making love all the time and almost everywhere, they regularly fight, then kiss and make up, with little else going on in their empty relationship and quite ordinary daily life—until something horrible and hideous brutally puts an end to their trip. —IMDb

Director

Original

Bruno Dumont

Bruno Dumont is a filmmaker whose use of celluloid is a direct result of his intense desire to understand and make sense of the world around him. His downbeat dramas may not appeal to those who see only the negative in a cinematic world of stark reality, but viewers with the ability to see a glimmer of light in the darkness will surely connect with his sometimes bleak cinematic endeavors. A former philosophy professor who has turned his mind toward crafting confrontational films in which no aspect of modern society is out of bounds, Dumont has claimed that his films are the result of a noted effort to bring film back to the body in hopes of stirring the viewer’s emotions. His 1997 debut, The Life of Jesus, was not a literal retelling of the events of the life of the biblical Jesus, but a socially critical look at life in Northern France. Acclaimed worldwide for its affecting portrayal of bored street youth, the film opened many doors for the director, and it wasn’t long before… read more

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Ivan_F

10Mar13

Dumont demons in action in the Mojave Desert

frank sgro likes this

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Nico Parèn

29Dec12

Dumonts movies are like screams which are muted by walls of cotton absorbing the lonely voice. They are about the rational and irrational rings of causality. Reoccuring themes are spirituality, death, murder, faith, love, sex, landscapes, emptiness, xenophobia, emotional addiction and compulsive bahaviourism. And his films also tend to try to grasp the nature of trauma when not overcome and defeated by the victim.

Ivan_F and Solange de Cleda like this

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slaepwerigne

27Sep12

begrudgingly, i have to give this five stars. although it gave me nothing and took my evening and my mood, any film that can have such an impact on me deserves fair recognition for what it achieved.

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jana

8Aug12

inability to communicate, hear and understand, can lead to unjustified violence. B.Dumont just always wanted to shoot the film in the desert... pointless and very sad.

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W184

Yekaterina Golubeva, 1966 - 2011

By David Hudson on August 18, 2011

The actress best known for her work with Leos Carax, Claire Denis and Bruno Dumont was 44.

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TWENTYNINE PALMS (Bruno Dumont, 2003)

4 posts by 2 people over 3 years ago