‘Life of Jesus’ a Powerful Look at Dead-End Lives

Bruno Dumont’s “Life of Jesus/ La Vie de Jesus” is an exceptional French film that treats a familiar topic in ways we’re not used to. Winner of the prestigious Prix Jean Vigo as well as a special mention for the Camera d’Or in Cannes, this somber, powerful and intimate film is as intense and deterministic as a novel by Zola though its subject is very much close to home.

Set in the town of Bailleul in Flanders (where first-time writer-director Dumont was raised), “Life” is a bleak, unblinking yet inescapably sympathetic look at the dead-end existence of marginal young people who feel, not without reason, that they’re imprisoned in their own lives.

It’s a subject that American independent films have an invariable tendency to foolishly romanticize, turning aimless teenagers with nowhere to go and nothing to do into the equivalent of knights of the round table. Dumont, working beautifully with a completely nonprofessional cast, manages instead to dispassionately convey the shape of these lives from the inside, increasing our concern as he avoids either lionizing or blaming his subjects.

The protagonist of “Life” is 20-year-old Freddy (David Douche), out of school, unemployed, living with his mother (Genevieve Cottreel) in the rooms above her neighborhood cafe and hanging out with a gang of motorbike-riding pals.

Largely inarticulate, Freddy is also subject to disabling epileptic fits. The condition infuriates him, adding to his overall feeling of being trapped and symbolizing how emotions have been blocked inside him. For though Freddy is prone to bursts of hot anger, even a casual look at his face reveals softer feelings trying to break through the mask.

That sensitivity comes out in the patience Freddy takes helping his pet finch Leo learn to sing, and in his passionate relationship with his girlfriend Marie (Marjorie Cottreel), a cashier at the local supermarket.

Few films have better captured how the boredom and hopelessness of small-town surroundings can turn sexual activity into a completely involving obsession. Though the couplings between Freddy and Marie are brusque to the point of being mechanical (body doubles are used in the film’s brief explicitly sexual moments), they do allow for tenderness and release in their quiet aftermath.

Because of the tedium of these lives, “Life” is played out against a heavy air of foreboding, a feeling that is justified when a young Arab named Kader (Kader Chaatouf) begins to take an interest in Marie. The clumsiness of Kader’s bravado and the intensity of Marie’s tie to Freddy puts Marie off at first, but whether she cares about Kader or not when the unthinking racism of the motorbike gang is added to the stifled, claustrophobic nature of village life, the result is sure to be disturbing.

Writer-director Dumont conveys all this in a wonderfully measured, dispassionate style, neither cloying nor preachy, that comes, he’s said in an interview, from a background of shooting industrial films where “I learned how to create meaning and emotion out of nothing.”

Whether it’s using their motorbikes to challenge a hot sports car on narrow country roads or playing instruments in a barely alive local band, Dumont’s characters touchingly illustrate how the grinding, stifling nature of their reality serves to deaden almost all emotions. While Dumont’s style may sound pitiless, “Life of Jesus” (the title is never explicitly explained) arouses our concern. These may be limited, no-exit lives, but they are lives after all, and in this filmmaker’s patient, sensitive hands, that is reason enough to care.

* Unrated. Times guidelines: scenes of nudity and strong sexuality and a brief moment of explicit hard-core footage.

‘Life of Jesus/La Vie De Jesus’

David Douche: Freddy

Marjorie Cottreel: Marie

Genevieve Cottreel: Yvette

Kader Chaatouf: Kader

Released by Fox Lorber Features. Director Bruno Dumont. Producers Jean Brehat, Rachid Bouchareb. Screenplay Bruno Dumont. Cinematographer Philippe Van Leeuw. Editors Guy Lecorne, Yves Dechamps. Costumes Nathalie Raoul, Isabelle Sanchez. Music Richard Cuvillier. Set decorator Frederic Suchet. Sound Eric Rophe, Matthieu Imbert, Olivier De Nesles. Running time: 1 hour, 36 minutes.

* Exclusively at the Nuart, 11272 Santa Monica Blvd., West Los Angeles, (310) 478-6379.