Twentynine Palms

2004 Drama

A couple drives their Humvee into the California desert. David (David Wissak) is ostensibly working, scouting locations near Twentynine Palms for a photo or film shoot. His girlfriend, Katia (Katia Golubeva from Leos Carax's Pola X), is along for the ride. David is American; Katia is French and speaks little English. The couple travels through the desert, meandering through the vast, empty landscape. They argue. They make love. Writer/director Bruno Dumont (whose previous film, L'Humanité won the Grand Jury Prize at the 1999 Cannes Film Festival) uses long takes and an elliptical structure to frame the action as these two characters struggle to communicate while traversing the long, dusty roads. The trip includes a stop for Chinese food, a brief encounter with a belligerent motorist, an argument over ice cream, a painful run-in with a three-legged dog, and a huge argument in the middle of the night, during which the two come to blows. Katia and David reach an uneasy reconciliation, but their strained, though passionate, relationship, is pushed to the breaking point when a terrible, traumatic incident unexpectedly occurs on the road. But the ultimate horror of their little excursion is yet to come. Twentynine Palms was shown at the 2003 Toronto International Film Festival, and was shown by the Lincoln Center Film Society in 2004 as part of their annual Rendez-vous With French Cinema. more..

Director: Bruno Dumont

Starring: David Wissack, Yekaterina Golubeva

Reviews

  • At turns sexy, ultra-violent and sweet, it will infiltrate your brain long after you've seen it.

    V.A. Musetto - New York Post

    20 January 2013

  • Dumont's methods are radical, but there's a fascinating method to his seeming cinematic madness.

    David Sterritt - Christian Science Monitor

    20 January 2013

  • The sustained force of Mr. Dumont's vision of existence as a swirl of brute instincts may not be easy to absorb, but it marks him as a major filmmaker.

    Stephen Holden - The New York Times

    20 January 2013

  • This is one of those films in which the Act of Driving becomes a 10-minute statement of high emptiness; Dumont even manages to make sex in the desert boring.

    Owen Gleiberman - Entertainment Weekly

    20 January 2013

  • It's alternately monotonous, hot and dramatic, which makes for a peculiar, not entirely unsatisfying atmosphere of neo -- or is that post? -- noir. What it all means, of course, I have no idea.

    Michael O'Sullivan - The Washington Post

    20 January 2013

Awards

  • Bruno Dumont

    Sitges - Catalonian International Film Festival (2003)

  • Rachid Bouchareb

    Venice Film Festival (2003)