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?
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,
26 Jul 2007
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,
3 Aug 2007
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,
16 Aug 2007
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,
17 Aug 2007
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.