L'EMPIRE (THE EMPIRE)

An incomprehensible Gallic comedy without a single joke that lands L’Empire cringingly blends sci-fi spoofs and social realism into a tedious, pointless film that should never have been attempted.

You can type this shit but you cannot say it, Harrison Ford is supposed to have said to George Lucas about the dialogues in Star Wars. You wonder how much more scathing he would be about the script of L’Empire, an abysmal film that takes sci-fi tropes in a nowhere direction.

In the movie, inhabitants of a small French village are taken over by two warring cosmic races, the Ones and the Zeroes, as they are preparing for an all-out apocalypse. This battle between good and evil is complicated by the humans’ many, many flaws though.

Invasion of the Body Snatchers proved (twice over) that such a premise could yield absorbing, mind-provoking entertainment but L’Empire does the opposite. Writer-director Bruno Dumont vaguely hints at a message about stupidity and petty wars extending throughout the universe and throughout human history (the alien motherships are modelled after the palace of Versailles and the Sainte-Chappelle abbey) but he is far from articulate in expressing what exactly he wants to say.

Maybe that is not his point and he wants to focus on the comedy, but on that front L’Empire is a total dud as well. Granted, I’ve never been a fan of the on-your-face Gallic sense of humour but Dumont reaches a disturbing nadir with absurdist visual jokes that land with a thud and horrible dialogue that’s made even worse by the pathetic acting of a bunch of mostly non-professional thespians.

You could call L’Empire a Monty Python film without the talent, a Louis De Funès comedy without the energy, a Spaceballs without the zaniness. Or you could just call the film out bluntly for what it is: a wildly of the mark folly that should never have been made and – if you want to spare yourself two hours of your precious time – that should never end up on your watchlist.

release: 2024

director: Bruno Dumont

starring: Lyna Khoudri, Anamaria Vartolomei, Camille Cottin, Fabrice Luchini