La Vie de Jésus

96 minutes | France 1997 | French with English subtitles | Certificate 18

One of the great debut films of recent times, Bruno Dumont’s social realist portrait of unemployed French youth frankly presents the brutality and exhilaration of teenage life.

In a tiny Flemish country town, trouble is brewing. Freddy and his mates pass the time riding mopeds, having sex and hassling immigrants. When a young Arab man makes a pass at his girlfriend, Freddy decides to punish him for “such a provocation.”

Winner of the BFI Sutherland Trophy, Camera d’Or at Cannes, the Prix Jean Vigo and European Discovery of the Year at the European Film Awards, this film features a startlingly graphic sex scene.

An impressive, sensitively scripted debut from writer/director Dumont. There are some powerful performances from the inexperienced cast, especially Douche, who plays Freddy with a startling combination of tenderness and murderous rage. TOTAL FILM

It’s difficult to formulate in words such a profoundly cinematic realisation of affairs. Through carefully structured images and actions, captured, allied and interwoven, we find a message of immense breadth. CINELOGUE

Restrained, haunting and thought-provoking. Dumont’s award-winning debut is no less provocative than its successors, and it’s marked by the same sensibility that has informed all the director’s work: blank solemnity, eerie restraint and a seeping sense of hopelessness as the tides of fate drag the film’s characters way out of their depth. FILM 4