The Empire
Directed and written by Bruno Dumont
Starring Brandon Vlieghe, Anamaria Vartolomei, & Lyna Khoudri
Unrated
Runtime: 1 hours, 50 minutes
Opens at New York's IFC Center on March 7 with national expansion to follow

by Clayton Hayes, Staff Writer

I’ve been eagerly anticipating Bruno Dumont’s The Empire for some time now; I mentioned it in our watchlist roundup back in January of 2023, but despite being released over a year ago in France and Belgium, it’s only recently been picked up for the U.S. Reviews of the film have been largely negative, and it’s true that Empire is a bizarre piece of filmmaking. Those dismissing it as a failed sci-fi parody or as some sort of practical joke aren’t really reacting to what they’re seeing on screen. You see this a lot with films, especially genre films, that don’t neatly fit into a particular genre. There’s no clear way to market the film and synopses - written or translated by someone who’s likely never seen the film itself - end up misleading or downright wrong.

In Empire’s case, viewers are supposedly in for an “apocalyptic conflict” between good and evil alien races struggling to “win humanity over to their cause” in a film that’s “part Star Wars” and “part Spaceballs.” What they will see instead is an understated sci-fi pastiche with sensibilities far more in keeping with arthouse film than blockbusters. Setting the expectation that Empire will be some combination of sci-fi epic and side-splitting comedy is a recipe for disaster, and it’s no wonder that audience expectations haven’t been met. That mismatch is the cause of a lot of the complaints showing up in reviews.

Though Empire is far from perfect, I found its bizarre sensibility and slyly subversive sense of humor deeply fascinating. I’m not convinced it was ever intended to be a comedy but, if it is comedic, that relies entirely on juxtaposing the banality of its characters and setting with the grandiosity of its sci-fi plot. This should come as no surprise to those more intimately familiar with Dumont’s work, as Empire shares a lot of DNA with his 2017 miniseries Coincoin and the Extra-Humans and its 2014 predecessor Li’l Quinquin. All three were filmed in the same fishing town of Audresselles, on Northern France’s Côte d'Opale, and feature Bernard Pruvost and Philippe Jore as idiosyncratic gendarmes Commandant Van der Weyden and Lieutenant Carpentier. What’s more, Coincoin’s plot also involves a surreptitious alien invasion (from what I have read, at least) and the actor who plays Quinquin/Coincoin, Alane Delhaye, has a very similar look to Empire’s lead Brandon Vlieghe.

The film’s near-religious adherence to never breaking kayfabe requires its cast to strike a very specific tone, something that Empire unequivocally nails. Most of the cast are playing alien consciousnesses inhabiting human bodies, with their human inclinations and desires waxing and waning depending on the situation. In one scene, for example, Vlieghe’s Jony is addressing his “Knights of Wain,” a collection of local farmers on horseback. The objective silliness of what the audience is being shown is somehow not undercut by the Knights’ straight-faced responses that address both the alien and the human context of the situation. That this tightrope is successfully walked throughout the film’s near-two-hour runtime is an incredible accomplishment. Empire also looks amazing, with Dumont and cinematographer David Chambille clearly borrowing from the visual language of the sci-fi epic. Even the designs of the alien spacecraft offer an intriguing take on the idea, modeled as they are on well-known examples of French Architecture.

Still, Empire remains nearly impossible to describe coherently, and that isn’t just because of its bizarre plot. It’s a film that throws a lot of ideas onto the screen but, in my viewing, couldn’t resolve them into anything like a definite statement. That’s not always a problem but, as evidenced by his statements about the film, Dumont had a very clear message he had intended for Empire to convey. The film is too weighed down with an overabundance of ideas that are related to, as Dumont puts it, “the internal struggle, in the heart of each human being.” This sense that Dumont is haphazardly throwing ideas at the screen isn’t helped by several disorienting edits that strand certain scenes outside of the flow of the film. What Dumont appears to be aiming for, giving the audience just enough definite information while allowing them to come to their own conclusions, is an extremely delicate balancing act that Empire falls short of pulling off. What remains, though, is very much worth watching.

Finally, I do want to speak a bit about Adèle Haenel’s leaving the film, a situation I was unaware of until I finished Empire and did a bit of background research. Haenel, who is likely most familiar for her incredible work in Portrait of a Lady on Fire (dir. Céline Sciamma, 2019), was originally cast in Anamaria Vartolomei’s role but left after butting heads with Dumont creatively. She reportedly came to feel that the script was “dark, sexist, and racist” and “full of jokes about cancel culture and sexual violence.” These quotes are, importantly, all from interviews appearing in the French and German press and it’s hard to judge the accuracy of the translation, but I can say that I did not see those issues in the finished film. Haenel also criticized Empire’s entirely (at the time) white cast, which is an absolutely valid critique that can be levied at a lot of films (which is no excuse). I do wonder how much her comments grew out of her well-publicized frustration with the film industry more broadly, but I cannot fault her for sticking to her convictions and leaving a film she was not comfortable with.

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