Cast

David Douche, Marjorie Cottreel, Kader Chaatouf, Sébastien Delbaere, Samuel Boidin, Steve Smagghe, Sébastien Bailleul, Geneviève Cottreel

awards

Cannes IFF 1997 – Golden Camera, Prix Jean Vigo; European Film Awards 1997 – European Discovery of the Year; Chicago IFF 1997 – FIPRESCI Prize; British Film Institute Award 1997 – Sutherland Trophy

Film description

Critics unanimously acclaimed Bruno Dumont’s award-winning debut – something that has not happened often since. Initially, however, he was proclaimed heir to the master of French cinema, Robert Bresson, because of his ascetic style, reliance on amateur actors, focus on unspectacular, everyday life and secular perspective on religious topics.

Dumont’s element is observation. In The Life of Jesus, he looks at the daily life of a group of teenage boys in a Bailleul – the director’s hometown in northern France. The boys act like a gang, riding around on motorcycles and fixing old cars, but also play in a marching band. Their idle, but restless existence keeps them in perpetual suspension and offers no challenges. The most sensitive boy of the group, the epileptic Freddy, has a girlfriend. When she leaves him for Kader, a young Arab immigrant who has been pursuing the girl, Freddy finds an opportunity to release his frustrations through revenge. Bresson juxtaposes his passionless and raw portrayal of a love act with the violence that pushes Freddy into manhood. It is the boy’s real initiation into the adult world.