In France, the very notion of hameau, or hamlet, supposes a tension between two antagonistic ideas: remoteness and community. On the one hand, a hamlet is usually linked, at least administratively speaking, to a village; the hamlet is dependent on it, but it stands apart, it keeps at a distance. On the other hand, any hamlet will contain a number of houses and farmhouses, often quite close to one another, while around the hamlet, a few isolated farms will create a sort of archipelago, a loose network, traditionally separated by fields – family properties, often quite small. These farms are scattered about, close enough that they can see one another, but at some distance nevertheless. It is in such hamlets on the Opal Coast of northern France that Bruno Dumont shot Hors Satan in 2011 and P’tit Quinquin in 2014.

Hors Satan begins under a rainy light, in front of a closed door. A hand knocks vigorously, the door opens slightly, and another hand gives a sandwich to the person who is standing outside. A long shot follows, which shows the various houses and outbuildings of the farm where the young girl lives who will become the vagrant’s friend and accomplice. As the film begins, the director thus sets up two different spaces: one is inhabited by men, made up of several farms huddled together, and the other is a landscape, the dunes of the Opal Coast. Between the constructed world and the natural world, the two main characters (the young girl and the vagrant) go constantly back and forth. In Hors Satan, bodies have a significant presence, while both the hamlet and the landscape as a whole are seized by feelings of strangeness and beauty, by an oscillation between inertia and energy, and, in fact, this fluctuation punctuates the entire narrative and the unfolding of its enigma. In truth, the notion of narrative – a transparent and rational story, told in a straight line – is incidental. As Bruno Dumont himself said about stories: ‘You need one, of course, but it’s of secondary importance. I write about places, not about stories.’

Defective, Luminous

After praying silently for a long time while facing the wild landscape of the sea dunes, the vagrant walks on the road that leads to the hamlet and finds the young girl crying near her family’s farm.