Bastards (2013)

Bastards by Claire Denis was screened at the Cannes film festival, and afterwards, she made some changes. I am not sure whether the version we saw in Sodankylä was the final one but be that as it may, Bastards didn't convince me, something I can't even blame on the fact that I was seated too far from the screen to pay full attention to the movie. I have watched quite many films by Denis, and never before have I reacted negatively to the elusive and dizzying nature of some of her films. Here, however, I had the feeling that Denis did not quite know what she was up to and that there was even something fishy about the whole miserabilist thing. A couple of scenes works pretty well but my overall impression was that the structure doesn't work. Denis works with actors that have performed in her earlier movies. Some of them are impressive - especially Michael Subor whom I remember from L'Intrus. The film opens with a suicide. Police investigators. A naked woman is running around, her body covered with blood. We learn that the man who committed suicide, Jacques, was deep in debt and the brother of the widow is now trying to help out. The brother lives in the same house as the man to whom Jacques owed money. They start an affair. And then there's the woman whose naked body we saw, she's the daughter of Jacques... This sounds complicated? Yeah, it is, and I don't feel Denis succeeds in tying together questions about money, abuse, sex and family relations. The tangles remain, as it were, in a knot that never opens up for me. When the film ends in the big Revelation, I cannot help feeling that nothing at all got clearer, that Denis relies on a form of mystification that titillates, allures, nothing more (even though, admittedly, hers is a very peculiar form of titillation - this is not exactly a dazzling film, except for the Lynchesque ending scene). Everything is rotten, but Denis makes it quite seductive in a strange way, and that's my issue here. Mystification is particularly troubling here as the film hints at one of the main characters being a victim complicit in her own violation. I wish I could admire the style of this film, the gray light, the chopped-up scenes, the lack of reasurrance. But I have no clue where the film is going, or what it wants from me, so - no, I am looking forward to Denis' next film.