JEANNETTE: THE CHILDHOOD OF JOAN OF ARC

Master French filmmaker Bruno Dumont continues to confound expectations. The austere, unsparing director of such somber, quasi-religious parables as The Life of Jesus and Humanité turned to silly, sometimes stomach-churning slapstick in his last two works, Li’l Quinquin and Slack Bay. Now he has transformed the early life of one of France’s most beloved heroines and icons into a musical! Dumont imagines how a young, 15th-century peasant girl who saw religious visions and resented the France’s English occupiers became a freedom fighter. Named the second best film of 2017 by Cahiers du cinema magazine. Music by Igorrr. “With this heavy-metal musical, French writer-director Bruno Dumont marries the religious themes of his Hadewijch and Outside Satan with the absurd humor of his Li’l Quinquin and Slack Bay. The results are one of a kind and certainly not for everyone, but if you can get on its wavelength, you’ll find much to appreciate: the natural settings are gorgeous, the conversations on faith are probing, and the music rocks.” –Chicago Reader.Cleveland premiere. Subtitles. DCP. 115 min.