Twentynine Palms (2003) User Reviews (113)

Shock and horror

[howard.schumann · 13 October 2003]

A three-legged dog, a dead body lying naked in the middle of the desert, a cop on his walkie-talkie calling for backup and a road block miles from the nearest inhabitant. These and other bizarre things show up in Twentynine Palms, the latest film by Bruno Dumont (La Vie de Jesus, L'Humanite). It is essentially a horror film that might easily be called "Scream 4". The opening scenes are beautiful and serene. David (David Wassik), an independent photographer from Los Angeles, and Katia (Katia Golubeva), a young woman without work, travel in a red 4X4 Hummer toward the vast California desert preparing to do a photo shoot for a magazine near the Joshua Tree National Park. The road leads to a motel in the city of 29 Palms, a desert oasis that in the film consists of one gas station, one hotel, and a swimming pool. Dumont says that he filmed in the U.S. rather than his native France because he "… felt the need to change space, ingredients, colors... and it is while filming in California that I had a true shock". The shock extends to the viewer as well.

There is little dialogue or action in the conventional sense. The communication between the couple is complicated by the absence of a common language: he speaks English, she only speaks French. What conversation exists is trapped in a level of superficial banality. The lovers explore the desert in their 4X4 and are focused entirely upon their own pleasure, seemingly defined by their sexuality. They swim in the motel pool, watch game shows on television, eat, make love in the middle of the desert, eat some more, argue and make up, then make love some more, all shown in explicit detail. Everything is familiar, a slice of typical Americana, yet nothing is as it seems.

Little by little the milieu becomes oppressive; a quiet and incoherent fear begins to settle in, an abstract fear because as Dumont says, "there is no reason to be afraid." At the end, nothing can fill the emptiness but destruction. The contrast between the poetry of nature and the constricted range of the human experience is clear. In this world without a spiritual core, the screams of pain and screams of delight are indistinguishable and anguish has the same meaning as pleasure. According to Dumont, "There is at the same time the bliss of pure happiness and absolute horror, the capacity to generate the two extremes: the hyper violence and the hyper pleasure. This is a couple that lives for pure pleasure and that will be led into abomination."

One cannot be neutral about a Bruno Dumont film (many people walked out during the Vancouver showing). His audiences are polarized between those who love and those that detest his films and the director seems disinterested in reconciling the two. I found this film extremely difficult to watch and even harder to be emotionally engaged with the characters. Dumont tests our endurance with scenes of brutal violence, making no concession to our sensibilities. In bringing us face to face with our worst nightmare, however, he forces us out of our state of emotional detachment and compels us to react, not with our minds or even our hearts, but viscerally with the totality of our being. Far removed from the pre-digested package cinema of Hollywood, Dumont has made an important statement about American values. The question must be asked however -- with films like Twentynine Palms that are so off-putting, will there be anyone who notices?

Very depressing film

[LLAAA4837 · 2 September 2007]

This film is about tragedy, rape, and murder. It is not a romantic film, it is not a horror film, it is just a film about the most depressing aspects and results of really bad consequences. It is a seriously messed up film. One that I only could stomach once. I mean, this film is sad stuff. It is well acted by the two leads, but to really grasp the nature of it, you're just going to have to watch it to see what I mean. To tell you anything about the climax would be ruining a very unwholesome and devastating experience. I couldn't even sleep after watching this. I can't say that it's just simply really disturbing. It hits way deeper than that. It's just, wow. It hits hard. I recommend it to people who are open minded about their films and about the possibilities of films like these.

Great, unusual experience - very strong, raw, primordial...

[ik-12 · 10/10 · 22 March 2004]

This seems to be a serious film, although it's easy to misunderstand it or to be appalled by it. Scenes of "animalistic" sex with almost no conversation or foreplay, scenes of horrific violence, hardly any plot -- all that might be a total turn-off for many.

I was lucky to attend a Q&A session with the director, where he answered a lot of questions. The idea for this film was born when Dumont was in California desert, and, as he puts it, "I was afraid". It seems the time and space and the silence and the power of it all influenced him very much. Among other things, he addressed the audience before the film started, with "if you become afraid when you watch this film, just cover your face with hands".

He also stated later that the film is an experiemnt at expressing his feelings, and has no intent, or narrative, or message. The director is free to express himself, and the spectator is free to see whatever (s)he may in the film and take that away. The characters are stripped of anything that would make them likeable or dislikeable, and generally of anything but the very primitive in order to make the experience pure.

The characters are not the focus of the film; sound and background are. "Untreated" location sound was used throughout the film and is very important for the director to convey the sense of the place and time. In one scene one could even hear the sound of lighting generator behind the camera, which Dumont refused to edit out during the argument with the sound crew. Camerawork is also original and important in this experience.

The serenity of transcendent scenes remind me of Zabriskie Point. Using explicit sex and violence remind me of Irreversible and I Stand Alone. Yet, this is certainly not a "following", this is a highly personal expression, which is designed to generate a highly personal experience for any viewer.

Altogether NOT recommended if one is looking for "normal" filmgoing experience.

Slow meditative pace, shocking climax.

[Rapeman13 · 5 January 2007]

Twentynine Palms (2003) The basic plot outline for Twentynine Palms is that David, a photographer from LA and his Russian lover Katia (who speaks only in subtitled French) are out in the California desert scouting out locations for an upcoming photo shoot, at night they sleep in a motel room in the city of Twentynine Palms, and by day they explore the desert in their red Hummer.

First off, there is very little dialog or action in this film, it just flows naturally, relying mainly on visuals and the bleak, brooding atmosphere of the desert. The characters of David and Katia are basically hollow, there's nothing for you to like or dislike about them, they're nonentities. Their relationship is very intense and volatile, but ultimately empty, based purely on frequent bouts of animalistic f ucking in the desert sand, on the rocks, wherever. Constant long shots distance the viewer from what is happening on screen, which adds to the overall feeling of isolation that the film emits.

During one of their daily scouting missions in the middle of nowhere they are suddenly rammed from behind by a white pickup truck with blacked out windows, they pull over and 3 men jump from the truck, pull the couple from their Hummer, and start to beat David's head in with a baseball bat. Then while one man holds Katia..s head, forcing her to watch, another of the men brutally rapes David while screaming in orgasmic glee, after he comes, he zips up and the men disappear as quickly as they arrived, leaving the couple in the sand. They go back to their motel room where David sits on the bed completely traumatized. The next morning Katia goes out to get a pizza (?!) and when she comes back David has locked himself in the bathroom, she patiently waits for him to come out. Then suddenly the bathroom door flies open, David bursts out screaming, his head completely shaved and proceeds to viciously stab Katia to death. The final scene of the film is the abandoned Hummer in the middle of the desert, David's dead body beside it and a highway patrol officer on his police radio calling for an ambulance.

Twentynine Palms starts off as a cinema verite-style road movie with stunning imagery, stylish camera-work and a slow meditative pace, but after the shocking ''climax'' you are left with one startlingly bleak and nihilistic film. Director Bruno Dumont has said his film has no intent, narrative or message. He as a director is free to express himself on celluloid, and we as spectators are free to take whatever we may from it. The characters are deliberately stripped free of any discernible traits, therefore we cannot identify with them. Instead the focus is on pure sound and image. A fantastic piece of cinematic art. 10/10 Highly recommended.

They're on the road to nowhere....

[MOscarbradley · 2/10 · 16 March 2020]

Bruno Dumont is famous for his sex scenes which are explicit if not altogether numerous. When they aren't having sex his characters usually mope and do very little. Some people mistake this for depth. "Twentynine Palms" is a road movie, filmed in America, mostly in English with a little French and no subtitles, in which a photographer and his lover drive across the desert to a place called Twentynine Palms, stopping every so often to have sex. You might say that if Antonioni could get away with it in "Zabriske Point" then why can't Dumont, the difference being, of course, that Antonioni was an artist with something to say about the state of America at the time while Dumont's concerns are much more insular, interested in nothing but his two characters and even then, not much interested in them.

It might have helped if the characters themselves were interesting but they are simply self-centered and dull while the landscapes, (endless roads, rocks, cacti and motels), are equally boring. It's really just another case of the old ennui and the sexual act doesn't get more interesting just because it's being performed on the top of some rocks, (though I suppose it does give an extra layer of meaning to the expression 'Getting your rocks off'). Also for some reason Mr Dumont chooses to end things very badly indeed for his dull couple, perking the film up a tad in the closing minutes.

drivel...

[cultfilmdistribution · 1/10 · 17 September 2006]

This is the first time I've ever posted a comment on IMDb. I felt so angry after watching this film that I couldn't help myself.

I should qualify my comments by first saying that I watch a lot of films - cult films, horror films, art house, American, Japanese, I watch lots of everything and I also programme films for film festivals. So this isn't a "I don't understand art cinema and only like Hollywood" kind of response. In fact, I generally like art-house cinema and older films much more than mainstream cinema.

29 Palms, however, is utter drivel. Halfway through the film I was starting to wonder whether Dumont was making a satirical comment on these flaky, pretentious and pointless characters. How else to explain that he could have felt that there could be any point in watching these incredibly boring characters. The film is nigh on unwatchable because the characters are such total dullards and nothing happens. There are times when inaction can be fascinating - Monte Hellman has a pretty good stab at a film about nothing happening in Two Lane Black Top. But I finally got the sense that Dumont felt that he was communicating some kind of grand human struggle with his characters. He isn't. He's just simply filming two stupid people playing stupid characters who act like children.

When the action does kick in, after an hour and half of utter boredom, it is totally unsatisfactory. You get the sense that Dumont has no respect for horror films. The first hour and a half is perhaps supposed to elevate the horror elements into something sublime. But this isn't a subversion of horror clichés, it's an obliterative film that takes all of the satisfaction out of the horror elements. There is a vast problem at the moment in that directors don't see the potential in genre films. Horror films these days are generally dumb or incredibly pretentious deconstructions of the genre.

The problem with 29 Palms lies in the fact that without the action of the last half hour there would be no film. But because the first three quarters of the film is so unengaging the last quarter seems utterly pointless anyway. There is no build-up of tension towards the climax, no atmosphere, just bad performances. And the climax is so obtuse that it is mostly amusing. Many great films have covered the themes of 29 Palms. Dumont's film keeps its themes out of focus in an attempt to make grand statements. Ultimately it is says absolutely nothing about anything.

After watching the extras on the disc it does indeed turn out that Dumont thinks that these characters are somehow fascinating. The main actor talks about his performance as if he invented acting. Dumont speaks as if actors have no understanding of the process that they go through. The 'Making Of' Documentary plays like Spinal Tap.

This is a grossly misguided film by a pretentious and misguided director. People will read deep meanings into it but really this is dreadful film-making of the highest order. Absolute drivel, there's no doubt about it.

one good review...

[prosthetk · 16 July 2004]

i can easily understand why this film has been so hated, but i must say that it is at times one of the most beautiful, and at others, one of the most disturbing films i've ever seen. after seeing humanite, i walked in to the theatre with very low expectations (i'm not a dumont fan in the least), but something in the stark beauty of the photography sucked me in, i found the numb vacant space of the characters, and hook, line and sinker, fell right into dumont's trap. i doubt i would recommend this film to anyone but my closest (and most tolerant) friends, but have to say that i loved it, and thing it may also be found rewarding by other patient and adventurous viewers.

Mixed bag....worth a watch, I think.

[Quag7 · 7/10 · 13 January 2007]

Well this one definitely isn't for everyone, as you can tell by the comments. For awhile, I liked this movie. I kind of liked these two driving around in the desert. The movie had that sort of dreamlike Zabriskie Point thing going on. In fact, along those lines, I'd mention that the film did feel like something from the 1960s (in a good way).

Katia Golubeva is a pretty enough girl, and we see a lot of her.

I know from regular trips to Death Valley that Europeans have a special respect for American deserts. At Badwater Junction in Death Valley, you can walk out onto the salty flats and despite the fact that you're in a giant valley, they know enough to whisper, or remain silent altogether. It's a pensive respect for the desert I wish more Americans had.

Here, you get a lot of California desert; always a good thing (to me). I liked these two characters when they were getting along - there was a weird and charming sort of innocence in their sex life and affection for each other.

Didn't fully get why they were constantly sniping at one another or why they kept having falling outs with each other. And that seems to be important to the overall point of the film, and I'm still thinking about it. I wanted to slap them - especially David - when he was being a jerk.

Because you should *never* take a sexually liberated French girl naked in the desert for granted that way (Am I right?).

The end is jarring, and a metaphor for something but I'm not sure what, exactly. Something, I suspect, about the fact that the two characters should have been a little more tender and appreciated each other more (especially on the dude's part), what with all the meanness and cruelty in the world (and so on).

This is not for everyone. It is slow moving, beautiful to look at, with characters who occasionally charm and occasionally irritate. The end sequence is disturbing and unpleasant.

If you're a fan of mainstream Hollywood, you might find this excruciatingly boring. The pervasive quiet of the movie makes the end all the more startling.

This film was not an unqualified success, but there's a fair amount to like here, I think. For certain people, anyway.

Genius at Work

[kenjha · 2/10 · 18 April 2010]

An arrogant jerk and his whiny girlfriend embark on a journey to scout locations for photo shoots. The journey's rather uneventful but unfolds at an excruciatingly deliberate pace. They drive, make love, fight, make love, swim, make love, pet stray dogs, make love, buy groceries, make love, eat, make love, watch TV, make love, etc. This goes on for about 95 percent of the film's 17-hour running time. Then in the last few minutes of the film, something out of the blue happens that is totally unconnected to what has happened up until then. Warning: Dumont, the French genius who made the equally atrocious "L'Humanite," apparently is still on the loose and armed with a camera.

A quiet classic.

[monk_venkman · 9/10 · 30 July 2006]

Given the talk on this film, I really wasn't expecting much. And after watching it, I can safely say, that I will never trust the opinions of others again. Unlike my opinion, which you should all listen to! The complaints from people who say it's too slow moving, have obviously never treated themselves to some of the better films from Leigh or Jarmusch. I can imagine what they'd think of Stranger than paradise. These types of movie goers should be ignored at all costs. These ADD movie watchers are the reason films like Breakdown have to turn into a Rambo movie somewhere in the middle. Because studios are afraid these cinematic sugar addicts will never follow a film not layered in one liners, cool dialogue, and fast action.

Directed by Bruno Dumont, Palms moves along not so much in a slow and uneventful manner, as rather in a real life, non Hollywood fashion we all move in. Especially when we find ourselves in a small and hot desert town, as this couple does.

David (David Wissak) and Katia (Yekaterina Golubeva) are out in the California desert to find a setting for a photo shoot for David, an independent photographer. It's great that there are no distractions from the two main characters. No lights or heavy traffic, or friends stopping by for coffee. These two are as passionate as they are unstable in their relationship. They regularly shift back and forth between controlled arguing and uncontrolled sexual release. All of which is magnified by the heat and isolation of their surroundings.

What I love about this film is that I can't remember a single line from it. Just as I can't remember most conversations overheard in everyday life. They talk about the same mundane things we all do, while having the same petty arguments most in relationships have as well.

I know that hardly sounds like great movie viewing, but don't worry, that's not the entire film. Nor is it what makes this film brilliant. What makes it brilliant is how it uses the seemingly uneventful as it's base, while building upwards from that with a constant undertone of tension and dysfunction that shifts back and forth between blunt and subtle.

This is not a fun movie to watch. But it is one that I will never forget.

Watching Paint Dry ...

[writers_reign · 1/10 · 31 July 2005]

... is riveting compared to this crud. I used to think Godard had it all wrapped up pseud-wise but this guy can give him cards and spades. In this so-called movie we follow a nebbish, a guy who has neither looks, charm or charisma and resembles nothing so much as a young Timothy Carey who has somehow lucked into a pretty, even at times beautiful girl who is accompanying him across the desert, a drive punctuated every ten minutes or so for screwing sessions - making love is definitely NOT the phrase to illustrate these couplings. They also eat, check out the scenery, quarrel, make up but it always comes back to coupling. After what seems like several decades but is only about 100 minutes they are run off the road by a gang of sub-humans, the guy is beaten with a baseball bat and raped by one of the animals as the girl, who has been stripped naked but is otherwise unmolested, is forced to watch. The gang drives off. The couple repair to a motel. The girl is stabbed to death. The next shot shows the man, naked and dead in the desert. Slow fade. If only Dumont had opened (and closed) with the last ten minutes he would have done us all a favour. Total rubbish and a waste of good film stock.

the being and nothingness

[dbdumonteil · 8/10 · 24 September 2006]

A photograph David goes looking for locations in the Joshua Tree area in the Californian desert with his girlfriend Katia. They don't speak the same language and the most palatable means of communication between them are gestures and looks. As soon as they arrive in this desert landscape, they bicker then reconcile each other, have sex, wander in the surroundings. And an impending, unshakable threat is just around the corner. One can feel it but one can't see it during almost all the film...

I stand in awe for the French filmmaker Bruno Dumont who could be Robert Bresson's heir, would it be only by his minimalist approach about the writing of a film and his way of filming. His two unique works, "la Vie De Jésus" (1997) and "l'Humanité" (1999) which had a strong connection with "le Journal D'Un Curé De Campagne" (1951) revealed a new, fresh auteur who delivered a thoroughly novel vision of the cinematographic genres the two quoted films belong to. This third offering as unsettling as its two precedent partners is very close to a mix of road-movie and horror film. One thinks of the horrendous "the Texas Chainsaw Massacre" (1974). But like his precedent efforts, Dumont won't follow the rules and will rather relinquish the codes of the genre.

His experimental piece of work holds his own mark. First, there's still this palpable sense of space which he has perhaps never tapped so well here. Anyway the scenery and the landscapes of this Californian desert were ideal for him to set out his stalls. This barren place has something both startling and eerie for it could be in the first place an equivalent of the garden of Eden. The sequence in which David and Katia are all naked on the rocks make inevitably think of Adam and Eve. This is a divine vision of a world which seems forever gone. These landscapes are also repulsive because dangerous. Nothing happens in them and danger could come out at any moment.

There's no real storytelling in "Twentynine Palms" like in Dumont's debut "la Vie De Jésus". It isn't really a handicap because the filmmaker knows how to grab the audience's attention with an unconventional, courageous approach of cinematographic writing. The film includes quite numerous static shots with a painstaking work on the sound which often sounds dirty Basically, the film showcases a love between two very different characters but this love and so this fusion between them is impossible. The scratch on the 4X4 is a concrete sign of this doomed love. Then, what fascinates Dumont in this failed loving relationship is the animal side which sleeps in them. It's the filmmaker's duty to awake it and it better explodes during their wild sexual intercourse which inconveniences the audience like the scenes in the swimming pool and the motel bedroom.

"Twentynine Palms" is also a typical work from Dumont because he wants the viewer to take part in his experiment. It means he wants him to arouse questions about what he can watch on the screen and especially about the main characters' thoughts. But also, to bridge the different steps of the evolution of the film (it would seem irrelevant to use the term "story" as there is virtually none here). Very simply, Dumont wants to put this crucial premise of the cinema to the forefront: a film is a link between its director and the audience and for Dumont it's up to the viewer to express his standpoint about the contents and form. "Twentynine Palms" is the antithesis of Dumont's second film, "l'Humanité". In this whodunit, the main protagonist Pharaon De Winter was deeply affected by the woes and sorrow in which this "humanity" was steeped in but it didn't stop him from sharing their grieves. In the Dumont 2003 film, humanity is virtually absent and even constitutes a danger (perhaps the main one) because it breaks the fleeting harmony of the couple. Consequences could be disastrous even gruesome.

It is impossible to leave this film indifferent which leaves none glimmer of hope. It could occupy a prominent place in the category of the "either you like either you hate" films and if you're tired of watching films made in a trite manner, this one is waiting for you...

But beware! It's better to have nerves of steel to watch this work.

Operation Desert Fox

[tieman64 · 25 April 2011]

Opening scene: cars, oil, movement. Main characters: an American called David and a Russian woman called Katia. They're allies, but don't speak the same language, he speaking limited Russian, she limited English.

They drive a gas-guzzling military vehicle through the desert. It's a "hummer", typically associated with the Gulf War and the US invasion of Panama (both wars to depose US puppets). Elsewhere, American military bases and soldiers dot the landscape. The Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center, we recall, is situated at Twentynine Palms. Like director Bruno Dumont's later film, "Flanders", "Palms" uses a power struggle between a couple as a springboard for examining US militaristic and political power.

Second scene: wind-farms, renewable energy. Our heroes squat and urinate beneath windmills whilst gazing out at automobiles. Having given green energy the middle finger, they continue on their journey. They're a preliminary force, scouting locations. But what comes after them?

They drive. While she is largely silent, passive, he leads most of their conversations. Though international dialogue is dominated by one voice, she manages to shape his lingo. Her voice irks him. He puts up with it.

He teaches her to drive his vehicle. She can't. She's useless. Still, she teases him. Mocks his ridiculously large vehicle and his irrational love for the machine. He doesn't like being belittled. Minutes later, during an outdoor sex act, he forces her to submit.

"Love scenes" are peppered throughout the film. The first takes place in a pool, the second in a dry desert, the third again in a pool. He becomes more abusive as their relationship progresses, almost drowning her during their third sex act. He watches a television programme; on screen a father is accused of abusing his daughter. Katia is disgusted. David doesn't care. What's wrong with power?

The fourth sex act takes place in a bed. She forces him into submission now, wrestling an orgasm from him. From here on they put aside sex in favour for psychological and physical attacks on one another. She can no longer tolerate him. He becomes the death drive rendered pure. He wants everything at the cost of himself; to consume her whole.

Final act: he injures a black dog with his ridiculously large vehicle. His masculine/military prowess is revealed to have repercussions, but so what? To him, it's just a dog. Meanwhile the natives, the symbolic Other, whom he condescending views as "dogs", fight back. Is this an act of justice, vengeance or just more macho posturing? Regardless, he's raped by a gang of locals and swiftly castrated. She wants to tell the police, but he can't bare the shame. He kills her, temporarily reasserting himself, before shamefully committing suicide out in the desert.

Final sequences parody or re-contextualise John Ford's desert mountains, the motels of Hitchcock and Hollywood's vision of violence, good, evil, cowboys and Western masculinity. The film positions itself as a European critique of Western Hegemony and male ego, but its audience is baffled. It's too esoteric to do damage - a New French Extremist amalgamation of "The Shining", "Funny Games" and "Bigger Than Life". Credits roll. Required targets left confused, misreading film as existential travelogue or art house horror movie.

7.9/10 – Worth one viewing. See "Afterschool".

Rorschach test for ultra patient viewers

[the_wolf_imdb · 1/10 · 2 June 2012]

It is impossible to define this movie as a "horror" or "drama" or "art". It is very hard to actually describe what this movie is about. It is extremely long and mostly consist of a ton of totally irrelevant scenes, dominantly riding in the desert, quarrels and sex under somewhat outdoor conditions. Nothing happens for about one and half hour, then there is a mess of unconnected scenes that try to be violent and dramatic.

There are many interpretations in the reviews about what is happening in the movie, but the fact is that the movie has no introduction, no sequential story, no climax and no end. It is not a story, it is a group of gray blots where the patient audience may try to fill some story of their own. But these interpretations are not based on any facts, because there are no facts in the movie.

Some say the girl is "unemployed girl from LA" and the guy is "a filmmaker". But I have noticed no facts supporting this explanation. The movie starts with the long sequence where the guy drives the car and the girl sleeps. The violence is supposed to be based on fact the guy hurt the dog. Well, the dog had three legs even before the collision. And I cannot somewhat accept gay ass-rape as the revenge of the injury of dog, it is so definitely out of place. There is no way to interpret the ending and especially murder of the girl. It just does not have any sense. I mean no sense at all!

The whole movie is excruciatingly boring and some full body nudity, a bit of violence and occasional simulated sex cannot save the ordinary viewer from the death of boredom. Intellectuals will try to project some of their ideas to this emptiness and may actually enjoy their made up stories and hypotheses of deep meanings of the movie and therefore like it. But they like their own interpretations, not the actual movie as there "is no movie in this movie".

The ending of the movie is as pointless as the beginning, only it is very accelerated. It is shortened so much that you have the idea the filmmakers just ran out of the money and had to wrap the thing quickly so they have enough cash to buy the fuel to get back from the desert.

I can recommend this piece only for fanatics of "Dogma" and such weird attempts for "high art" movies. Anyone who expects just a enjoyable thriller / horror / drama will hate this movie.

Quite possibly the most boring movie I've ever seen.

[vsdobbs · 1/10 · 29 March 2007]

I've seen many slow movies in my days. Some of them are among my favorites (Stalker, I You He She, etc.). However, this movie is so boring it has to be seen to be believed. Actually, ignore that--don't waste your time. This movie was so ridiculously boring that I fast forwarded through the sex scenes. Terrible, terrible stuff.

There is zero plot, nothing interesting happens, the acting is, well, uninteresting (how can one comment on the acting it takes for characters to sit in a car or have sex). It truly has nothing to recommend it except for some nice scenery--and any movie that's not a nature documentary that has me commenting on the scenery (especially a movie where the main couple is naked for 40% of the film (no, that's not the scenery I meant)) doesn't have anything going for it.

Do yourself a favor and avoid this one.

Life is like an empty road --

[rmax304823 · 3/10 · 7 July 2006]

It must have been a small-budget film and it shows. Sort of a travelogue with sex and violence, it meanders along the byways of Jumbo Rocks and Twentynine Palms, California.

Impressive, dignified scenery, and that's about it. Katia plays Katia, who speaks only French. David plays David, who speaks English and some French that falls just short of execrable, which is to say very much like my French. From some angles she looks a bit like Michelle Pfeiffer and from some angles he resembles Harry Dean Stanton. It's difficult to comment on their acting because, aside from some memorized exchanges, it seems that most of the time the director simply aimed the camera their way and said, "Okay, make something up." There's a good deal of playful poking and laughter, like that in John Cassavetes' films. People chuckle and giggle because they can't seem to think up anything else to do.

The couple has squabbles and sex. The reasons for the squabbles? Let's see. He looks at another woman in a cafe. He buys her ice cream and asks if she likes it. "C'est bon," she replies, then, "Pas bon." (He sulks because she contradicts herself.) He hits a dog while driving the Hummer because she's blocking his window. Another argument, a serious one, occurs when she locks herself in the bathroom for reasons unexplained.

Is there sex? Yes, there is sex, simulated, and a lot of nudity. I had a sneaking suspicion that Katia and David weren't even married, yet here they are, stripping off in the desert, revealing themselves in all their hairy, angular, bilaterally symmetrical splendor. They lie on abrasive rocks, spreadeagled shamelessly. A couple of airliners pass overhead and any passenger who wanted to could look down on them from 37,000 feet and watch them rut and squirm like two javelinas. They don't care. They fornicate on rocks, in swimming pools, and in motel rooms. Oh, and speaking of animals, when David has an orgasm he makes more noise than Katia, although, to be sure, both of them overact in these scenes like porno superstars. What repugnant physicality.

The movie drags along for quite a while and when the climax comes we are totally unprepared for it. I don't know whether to get into it or not. I don't think I will, except to say that the scene seems to have been brought in from another movie entirely, some kind of slasher flick with a title like "Blood and Cactus". The heavies seem to be either Marines or skinheads, maybe both. The final episode of violence takes place for reasons that escape me completely.

Maybe I missed something. Could it be that life is like a road? It has its asphalt pavement and its potholes? Occasional stop signs? Long waits while indifferent freight cars rumble slowly through the crossing, sometimes stopping completely? And at the end you have a fatal traffic accident? This is a French movie so maybe I used the wrong national heuristic. The point of a French film might be that there is no point. That's the whole point.

In the end I found the film kind of sad. Not just because of what happens to Katia and David, but for reasons the producers probably never intended. At the beginning the couple stare in awe at acres and acres of energy-generating windmills arrayed across the desert. They find it splendid. I didn't. The ivory sand is dotted with Joshua trees and creosote bush, and littered with flowery paper wrappers, glittering aluminum cans and empty shotgun shells. The Hummer matter-of-factly passes a pile of half a dozen huge, black, discarded tires. If you fly into LAX there are days when you can see the smog as far inland as Twentynine Palms. The point I took away from the film is that if you treat a natural landscape as a garbage dump it becomes a garbage dump sooner or later. A desert ecosystem is a fragile one and, like a human life, can only take so much abuse before it is destroyed.

Zabrieski Point meets Deliverance

[DocFilm · 1/10 · 14 January 2007]

POSSIBLE SPOILER (If further spoilage is possible) It should take longer for directors to go into decline. A great disappointment after Pola X. He got much more out of Golubova in that film --- maybe her characterization, such as it is, and ultimate fate, in 29 Palms reflects a deterioration in their relationship.

Contrary to many comments, the dissatisfaction is not about the slow pace – we still love L'Avventura, Bergman, etc., but when there is nothing to look at in the frame, things become very boring. Narcissists are boring, and neither the director nor the actors (nor the Hummer) show us any complications of interest. It may be news to this French director that the California desert is harsh, the roadside strip malls soulless, but it shouldn't be news that sex can be soulless. No, I don't expect the director to make it erotic, but he shows nothing new about sex or violence to those of us over 10 years old.

Some have called this a horror film. Is it the horror of kitsch, of Disneyland, of TV,celebrity culture, of corporate America, of present day politics? Seen it all before. The horror of nothingness?: Been done much better before. This film telegraphs the upcoming horror leadenly --- 15 minutes into it I thought "Deliverance."

Worth viewing

[rudymovie · 10/10 · 10 June 2004]

Cette flic me plaisait beaucoup! Quel prestation du realisateur Dumont, mais le grand public ne comprendra, je pense...I mean, I liked it.

Although of course shocked by the brutal murder in the end, even if it was more suggested than real (Like Psycho "shower scene" original) I left in a good mood. At last a really good movie again, one that made you think... Very comparable to that recent masterpiece , also of 2 protagonists, and much written about, Lost In Translation. But much less reassuring about, what is called, "La Condition Humaine". Explanating and philosophising would seem useless. Others have done it enough. The long shots of empty landscapes where very useful to me, I have seen them myself, but also as a context for the "relation" between him and her. The same goes for the "great" village, they stay in. It is as empty as what is between them. What we see happening during the trip, between the two, is what happens in a lot of relationships, and marriages. But in a less extreme form.

Drifting apart, healing , coming together again, occasional quarrel, a fight, making love to make good, nothing new. The only new , is the breaking with conventional Hollywood film language. Fortunately the viewer is kept away from cliché's. Even the brute attack-and-rape scene by the 3 trash men, is not really new in movie history. It reminded me much of the ending of the famous "sixties "film Easy Rider (dir.Dennis Hopper) . Where the two heroes are literally blown off their motorcycles by shotgun fire from "local" Okies. Who represent the traditional American values, the "longhairs" tried to fight. In search for a new, and better world....like we all did then... That event was shocking in 1969 when I saw Easy Rider, as a young man, in the swinging city of Amsterdam. Now, in 2004 we are not shocked by this anymore. Also in my lovely Holland people are beaten in the streets by passers by for just one too long look.("You Lookin At Me??" Robert de Niro Taxi driver quote). "Useless violence" it is called here. Violence is neither useless nor useful. The idiot who raped the man looked just as worn down and un-triumphant as the man himself , after doing it to his old lady. They were all victims. Of what, is to the reader to decide.

Don't read the reviews -- see this film

[bhaviour · 10/10 · 27 May 2004]

I just came back from a second viewing of this movie. I saw it for the first time a few months ago and it has stayed with me as few films do. When I first saw it I went to see it "cold" -- I hadn't read anything at all about it, I only knew that it was the new film by Bruno Dumont. I recommend all potential viewers do the same. Even the barest bone "plot descriptions" of this movie will spoil it. It needs to be experienced fresh and with an open mind and hopefully with an audience willing to go along with the film's flow and not laugh at it just because it makes them uncomfortable. The first time I saw the movie Bruno Dumont was in the audience and answered questions afterward. Perhaps because of his presence even the dissenters were relatively well-behaved. But tonight's "sophisticated" New York City audience behaved idiotically. I for one will look forward to seeing the film again when it is on DVD and with an audience in my home that I know will meet the film honestly and give it the chance it deserves. It is a remarkable achievement.

A great film, but no entertainment

[Cinef · 10/10 · 22 December 2004]

I thought this film was excellent! (maybe not as good as La vie de Jesus or L'Humanite=same director) But you have to look at it differently than when you watch an entertaining Hollywood-film. This film is not entertaining at all, but that doesn't mean it's bad. The film doesn't really tell a story. It does something else: it "captures" an atmosphere, a strange kind of tension, a weird feeling, it captures the flux of life without dramatization... something which, for me at least, is much more interesting than just telling a story. There are other great directors doing it (in different ways of course): Hungarion Directot Béla Tarr, Austrian Director Michael Haneke, Gus van Sant (in his best films), or look at the films of Japanese director Ozu: his films have a lot in common with bruno dumont's in the sense that they don't rely on the script when making a film. they rely on the film when making the film!... The film is what touches me, not the story. A masterpiece!

The first great metaphor after 9/11. It scared the hell out of me.

[oso_travis · 10/10 · 28 May 2004]

Twentynine Palms. Directed by Bruno Dumont. (Unrated). ****

The victory of brutality over civilization.

At a first look "Twentynine palms" is just another trivial film. You might be tempted to think that is "Gerry" going porn and you may say "Come on, Frenchies. Grow up!". You may think is only sex, sex, sex, and sex with some violence. But analyzing the film more in depth, I found it rather disturbing and fascinating in its sociological and moral context.

Be aware. It is not a film easy to seat through. The first half shows walking around in the desert a la "Gerry", mixed with some hardcore sex scenes at the pool and at the motel. When the second half starts the film turns into a "lynchean" nightmare. We get to see mean white trash and three-legged dogs. And then the brutal ending, that every likes to talk about, which it seems it was extracted from somebody's worst nightmare.

Bruno Dumont has created a shocking metaphor with this film, shocking in deed. At the beginning of the film we see David getting ready to leave L.A. And then the whole film takes place in the barrel Joshua Tree desert, where the first trivial, then tragic events take place. The desert as a metaphor of the world after 9/11, with all the moral devastation, its raw madness and its social chaos. The world has become a lonely place, where "there's nothing to understand" and "where we are not alone" according to Katia's wise words. Nobody in the desert is subjected to anything. Forget morals, ethics and law, and give a new meaning to your life: to satisfy instincts, passions and impulses, doesn't matter if they are erotic, warring or psychotic.

Dumont brings to debate the contrast between civilization and barbarousness. And the thing that is so hopeless, is that barbarousness has triumphed and overcome humanity. It is the victory of brutality over civilization.

10/10.

From bad to worse

[themarina1 · 1/10 · 6 October 2003]

Bad. Bad, bad, bad. Can I say it enough times? I'm not sure why I stayed through this nightmare (probably because I'd spent my $7 and wanted my money's worth - and part of me wanted to see if it got any better). This was nothing more than a advertisement for Hummer with two people traveling through the desert, screaming at each other, when not arguing with each other they're having really violent sex, and then,in the end, going crazy. Just when I thought it couldn't get any worse, it does. The violence that erupts in the last 20 mins of this movie came out of nowhere. Nothing led up to it, there was no motive, nothing. It was pointless.

The best part of this movie was the ending. For two reasons: 1) it was finished and the punishment was over and 2) the end scene was very, very good.

I don't suggest seeing this but if you decide to see this nightmare for yourself, make sure you watch the last 2 mins. They are very, very good.

Mindnumbingly Awful and Boring

[jkantor · 1/10 · 4 June 2009]

It's not even enough to blame this on warped French sensibilities. There is no movie here - no plot, no story, no theme, no characters, no cinematography, no soundtrack - just boring shots of the desert inter cut with boring shots of awkward sex - until you finally and mercifully get an ending that is apparently from a different movie entirely. I think it must be a perverse joke by the director - some kind of statement on the absolute banality of our lives if we are willing to sit through something like this - and the fact that the best we can hope for is a violent end to our empty existence. The director should never be allowed to touch a camera again in his life.

Twentynine Palms

[I_John_Barrymore_I · 17 July 2007]

A couple are on a road trip in the deserts of Southern California scouting locations, presumably for a movie. Essentially nothing happens until the last five minutes when all hell breaks loose.

They're both volatile in their own way, and when I say "nothing happens" I mean there's no plot. It's just a study of their relationship. It's not referred to, but from the way they interact they probably haven't been together more than three months. We see them fumble around with their own insecurities and idiosyncrasies (an apology follows every foul-up and faux-pas) and it's clear they're still learning about each other. They're neither likable nor unpleasant, they're just an average couple.

Identical to director Bruno Dumont's L'humanite in that there's an irresistible, hypnotic quality to the endless shots of people driving and walking, the film also follows the same cyclical rhythm as L'humanite - except it has a much faster pace. It's beautifully shot, with Dumont taking full advantage of the landscape. Often the subject (whether it be a car or a person) is just a speck in the midst of mountainous desert.

The acting is not spectacular but it's very good, and most importantly the couple have great chemistry that's not exactly dynamic but it's very believable. When it erupts into violence in the final minutes it's all the more painful because we know them so well. It's like one of those slasher films that make a point of letting us get to know the characters before the killing starts, except in this case it's entirely successful.

A masterpiece. An absolutely stunning, mesmeric piece of cinema.