The Empire

Its oddity, evident in the barest descriptions, is so extreme as to threaten to overshadow its distinctive artistry and ferocious substance.

Working with the toolbox of popular American cinema to explore themes dear to the French cinematic canon, as well as his own, Dumont creates a singular cinematic experience.

Dumont’s screenplay stirs simplistic notions of good and evil into a plot that goes nowhere except — literally — down its own black hole.

Notable as it is for evoking a kind of cosmic banality, writer-director Bruno Dumont’s anti-space opera The Empire runs into same the pitfall as many parodies of its kind.

Formerly provocative French auteur Bruno Dumont continues his recent slide into dross with this tedious sci-fi parody set in the northern French department Pas-de-Calais.

Character development or basic reasoning as to why one action leads to another are pointedly missing in action, but that, in many ways, is all part of the fun of this unabashedly personal cine-UFO.

Every Star Wars fan who has reached the age of consent should see Bruno Dumont’s The Empire. It’s a bizarre yet movingly humane satire that exposes the philosophical deficiencies of the movie genre that dominates global film culture.

Unless you’re specifically attuned to Dumont’s goofy sense of humor, the cartoonish result quickly becomes labored and lumbering, uncertain whether it’s showing appreciation or striking back at its satirical targets.

Dumont’s latest space opera spoof is confusing and overwhelming, leaving viewers to wonder what the point was.


With its grandiose pronouncements and blatantly unflattering performances, The Empire might be taken as a post-ironic critique of human meaning, for which cynical laughter and sincere benediction are one and the same.