The Empire: Nothing if Not Ambitious

Recently anointed four-time Oscar winner Sean Baker once hailed Bruno Dumont as “one of the most important filmmakers working today.” Although that may be an exaggeration for a filmmaker whose repertoire primarily consists of meandering but thoughtful ruminations of humanity, if you make a low-budget rock opera about the childhood of Joan of Arc, you certainly earn the title of one of the most interesting filmmakers.

Like much of Dumont’s filmography, his sci-fi satire The Empire is relentlessly unafraid of what people might think of it. It is unabashedly itself; vaguely pretentious and perhaps even a little bit indulgent, but in a way that feels distinctively auteurish. In other words, this is exactly the movie that Dumont wanted to make, like it or not. On top of that, it’s an incredibly handsome production, with set design and CGI that far exceed the expectations one would have for an independent production like this.

The Empire takes place in a small village in Northern France, which becomes ground zero for a war between extraterrestrial forces. Ultimately, the story is hard to follow and nearly nonsensical—especially when it comes to its characters’ motivations—but that seems to be Dumont’s intention. You may have heard of the term “Glup Shitto,” referring to the needlessly intricate world-building of the Star Wars franchise, and The Empire satirizes said phenomenon by giving us a story that doesn’t make much sense. 

We are thrown into an interplanetary battle between the “Zeroes” and “Ones,” named so as to establish a binary that Dumont hopes to destroy. In the tradition of “Glup Shitto,” we meet a variety of warriors, leaders, and comedic sidekicks who we’re supposed to either admire or hate, but it’s hard to feel much emotion when the characters are as underdeveloped as they are here. At least with Star Wars, there are several films, TV series, and books’ worth of mythology to buy into. With Dumont’s original creations in The Empire, there’s no established fandom to fall back on.

If you’re looking for a riotous spoof a la Spaceballs, you’re in the wrong place. The Empire is rarely laugh-out-loud funny, with a humor that takes a drier tone. Even the absurdity—a mainstay in French genre cinema and the work of Dumont—feels more like it’s being weird for the sake of being weird.

Ultimately, the biggest issue with The Empire is that Dumont attempts to juggle too large of an ensemble for his 110-minute runtime. Again, this seems to be a response to the sci-fi franchises he borrows from, but the difference there is that in the more overstuffed films, George Lucas had years of goodwill and character development behind him. Dumont struggles to acquaint audiences with these characters over the course of a single film.

Happening breakout Anamaria Vartolomei stands out in her leading role, playing even the most ridiculous situations with a straight face. Although Vartolomei’s performance in Happening was impressive for its emotional nuance, her role in The Empire shows her willingness to go the distance for any role she is given. As the heroic princess of the “good side”—more Rey than Leia, if we are to stick with the Star Wars analogy—she has the most interesting arc in the film, finding her blind faith to the forces of “good” challenged by her realization that good and evil are not a black and white dichotomy. In a film full of extraterrestrials masquerading as humans, Vartolomei is the only one who manages to actually be convincingly human.

Vartolomei’s character is also perhaps Dumont’s most clever subversion of the genre’s tropes, presenting a rare example of the male characters (Brandon Vlieghe, Julien Manier) serving the arc of the female protagonist. Interestingly, there is a world in which Portrait of a Lady on Fire star Adéle Haenel would have been in Vartolomei’s role, but dropped out of the film due to the perceived sexism of the script. It’s understandable why, as Dumont treads a delicate line with his satire here. While the superficial aspects of the character, such as her wardrobe and sex scenes, may paint a picture of objectification and the male gaze, Dumont’s writing tends to be tongue-in-cheek or restores the character’s control in the situation.

On the other end of the spectrum is Fabrice Luchini, who plays the film’s alien antagonist with its most broadly comedic strokes. Luchini’s turn is exaggerated and heavy on the slapstick, standing out negatively in a film that otherwise balances its zaniness with its grounded setting quite well. The lightsabers and spaceships are surprisingly not distracting, but the ridiculous archetype of a cruel leader is.

As cartoonish as Luchini’s evil alien emperor may be, though, Dumont’s dialogue purports (repeatedly) that this is not a battle between good and evil, but instead humanity and a lack thereof. What is the difference, you ask? Dumont never really answers. He asks us to practice humanity but never gives us a way of going about making the world a better place or even identifying the causes of this inhumanity that plagues us.

It’s frustrating that, for a film with an inherently political title and inspiration that is as political as Star Wars, The Empire is frustratingly apolitical. Although there is something to be said about the “make love, not war” argument, the truth of today’s political ecosystem is that we’re past the point of this being effective or necessary. In the era in which we live, we need stronger condemnations of the type of imperialism that Dumont depicts here, like brainwashing innocent civilians. Unfortunately, these evil acts, supposedly creations of science fiction, are a bit too close to real life to be little more than the basis of a joke.

Yet even if The Empire does not have the same level of provocative commentary — or even entertainment value—as the rest of Dumont’s work, the filmmaker has proven time and time again that he always has enough interesting ideas to make his films worthwhile. The Empire is nothing if not ambitious, and it’s always refreshing to see such an idiosyncratic voice make a big, wild swing like this.

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