Eight years ago, the philosophy professor-turned-cineaste Bruno Dumont debuted his sophomore feature at the Cannes Film Festival. Set in a banal French village on the northeastern coast, the plot involved an investigation by police superintendent Pharaon, a repressed, mouth-breathing momma's boy, into the rape and murder of an 11- year-old girl. The movie opens with her crotch looming into view, a foretaste of the bloodless (mind) fucking to come. Pharaon's ineffable condition (a variety of existential retardation commonly acquired through contact with pretentious disciples of Bresson) is played off the desultory sex life of an inexpressive proletariat with Paleolithic anatomy and her virile, volatile lover—precisely the sort of thing for which the phrase "bumping... More >>>