Bas­tards

In a year where art-house releas­es (Norte: The End of His­to­ry, Blue is the Warmest Colour) and block­busters (The Hob­bit, Hunger Games: Catch­ing Fire) were seem­ing­ly in com­pe­ti­tion for the longest run­ning time, Claire Denis’ Bas­tards is an exer­cise in pure econ­o­my. Though less for­mal­ly opaque than Denis’ 2004 fea­ture, The Intrud­er, its terse­ness and sus­tained for­ward momen­tum will sure­ly cre­ate ques­tions in the minds of even the most sea­soned film­go­er. While every­thing in this half-noir, half-Greek tragedy will be explained, Bas­tards is a film that begs for — and is wor­thy of — mul­ti­ple viewings.

This is a world with­out pity, dom­i­nat­ed by sadis­tic sex­u­al­i­ty and almost rem­i­nis­cent of the cor­po­rate raiders that fea­tured in Olivi­er Assayas’ Demonlover. It is estab­lished imme­di­ate­ly — Tin­der­sticks’ tin­ny, haunt­ing theme aside — through images alone. Jus­tine (Lola Cré­ton) saun­ters naked, save for a cheap pair of pumps (pos­si­bly man­u­fac­tured at her family’s own fac­to­ry) down a Parisian street at night, blood drip­ping from her crotch. A man in a suit (lat­er revealed to be her father) wan­ders around an office, also at night. He stops to look down at the street below.

How they are relat­ed, even tem­po­ral­ly, at this point in the nar­ra­tive, is irrel­e­vant; they are sim­ply faces in the throes of silent anguish. Impor­tant­ly, they are olive-skinned faces that fit into the larg­er colour scheme of the shad­owy, mus­tard yel­low, grey, beige and black die­ge­sis. Denis has said in inter­views that she thinks white skin looks awful when shot in dig­i­tal, and her cast­ing choic­es for this film have helped to cre­ate an atmos­pher­ic uni­ty and cohe­sive­ness that helps moor the view­er when, like this open­ing, it’s easy to get slight­ly lost.

After Jus­tine is hos­pi­talised, her uncle Mar­co (the per­fect­ly crag­gy Vin­cent Lin­don) aban­dons his ship in the Mediter­ranean at the behest of her moth­er, San­dra (Julie Bataille). San­dra alleges that the sex­u­al vio­lence done to her daugh­ter, her husband’s sui­cide and the impend­ing finan­cial col­lapse of their shoe fac­to­ry all have to do with Edouard Laporte (Michel Sub­or), a creepy, pow­er­ful busi­ness­man who looks like ex-Pope Bene­dict XVI.

Mar­co takes an apart­ment in the same build­ing as Laporte’s much younger wife Raphaelle (Chiara Mas­troian­ni) and son, unsure of how to exact revenge. In one of the film’s more con­fus­ing scenes, Mar­co imag­ines Raphaelle, flanked by police offi­cers, find­ing her son’s bicy­cle bro­ken in the woods. Play­ing the Latin lover, Mar­co begins an affair with Raphaelle, and his rela­tion­ship with her deep­ens as his attempts to play detec­tive go nowhere and his mon­ey runs out. Equal­ly inhib­it­ed by Sandra’s hes­i­tance to reveal all she knows, Mar­co slow­ly iso­lates him­self from his past life, sell­ing his insur­ance pol­i­cy, his watch and mint-green vin­tage car, leav­ing behind more and more of his inde­pen­dence with each sale.

Fam­i­ly, as in US Go Home or White Mate­r­i­al, is per­ceived as a source of strength that actu­al­ly makes Denis’ char­ac­ters more vul­ner­a­ble, vio­lent and degen­er­ate. In the end, we see all the places that Mar­co nev­er gets to in his detec­tive work, places that reveal the full extent of his folly.