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Poster for Flanders

Flanders

2006 · 1h 31m · N/A Drama, Romance, War
Directed by Bruno Dumont

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Overview

André Demester secretly and painfully loves Barbe, his childhood friend, accepting from her the little that she gives him. He leaves home to be a soldier in a war in a far off land. Barbarity, camaraderie and fear turn him into a warrior. As the seasons go by, Barbe, alone and wasting away, waits for the soldiers to return. Will Demester’s boundless love for Barbe save him?

Director and cast

Critics on Rotten Tomatoes

Top critics, in their words

All reviews
68%
Tomatometer
Fresh

Dumont is much more confident when he sticks to the title town and the young woman the men left behind; his habit of alternating close shots with extreme long shots and his singularly unsentimental way of showing sex are as distinctive as ever.

Jonathan Rosenbaum, Chicago Reader
Fresh

This film has few tangible pleasures, such as some somber shots of Demester walking far away in a field. Its achievement is theoretical.

Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times
Fresh

The harsh and lovely achievement of Bruno Dumont's Flanders is its mixture of the concrete and the abstract. It isn't about a specific war. It's about conflict of every stripe, in any time.

Michael Phillips, Chicago Tribune
Fresh

Anything but comforting. With its depiction of bestial behavior and shocking wartime violence, it's the kind of film that polarizes viewers through the raw power of its imagery.

Jeff Shannon, Seattle Times
Fresh

French filmmaker Bruno Dumont urges his audience to delve beneath the movie's melodramatic, often graphic surface and experience the film sensorially rather than intellectually.

Desson Thomson, Washington Post

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