Bruno Dumont
Twentynine Palms

Talking about an author like the French Dumont is complex and nothing short of impossible. An author so radical that he triggers a sharp division between the ranks of admirers with misty eyes and savage detractors. My own directing professor condemned him for being cunningly smart in what is considered his masterpiece, L'Humanité (1999), especially due to that open ending which seems to be placed there to make up for a lack of concrete ideas. And he's not the only one.
Harsh criticisms have been especially targeted towards what I'm about to present. And I get it: Dumont is a true opportunist.
He's not interested in telling stories, he's not interested in giving emotions, and he's not interested in conveying something.

Dumont's cinema mainly focuses on the cinematic medium, on the actual cinema material.
"Twentynine Palms" (2003) is the result of his reflection that will make classic cinema purists shiver: "A film is not the result of a story. A film can also consist of mere images that can be disconnected from one another."
The idea is that of a pure cinema, almost akin to that cinema of the absolute theorized in pre-Nazi Germany: a cinema devoid of reference, finally free from rigid structures devoid of meaning.

"Twentynine Palms" is the most minimalistic on-the-road film you can find. A hypnotic journey that is a return to the origins, to that primitive animality represented by a scenic landscape of rocks, deserts, and seedy little motels. 
Moving in this universe so real it seems surreal and suddenly menacing is a couple of lovers. A couple that talks about nothing and acts for nothing. They argue in different languages (which is quite annoying for the viewer, especially if they know both English and French well, compounded by poor subtitles in the Italian edition) and are unable to understand each other: they laugh and immediately after quarrel. 
Immersed in an anguishing void, they can only find solace in wild and soulless lovemaking: in a pool, on the rocks. Unrestrained, terribly fake lovemaking  (as fake as their contradictory relationship) in stark contrast with the generous genital display of the protagonists, which would bring their effusions closer to certain reality.

And it proceeds like this, in the penumbra of the relationship between the sexes, before the film takes an unexpected and abrupt turn: from a human drama about the boredom of sexual relations, it suddenly becomes a horror. Human horror emerges from the unconscious darkness behind those icy faces. Those cars traveling undisturbed in the desert suddenly become threatening, and what happens seems to finally bring a question, a thus to this static relationship. It seems as if nature itself has pushed them, with violence, to decide, to act, and to change. Even (and especially) for the worse. 

The film unsettles for this reason: that violence which seems totally gratuitous, in truth, serves what Dumont aims to convey (because, if you make cinema, even if you admit otherwise, it's obvious you want to express yourself: no artist produces just to produce, otherwise they become a craftsman. Even the motto, art for art's sake, aimed to transmit beauty for its own sake, but it always talks about transmitting). 
But we are so accustomed to the boredom that afflicts the unsuspecting protagonists to catch that sharp blow in an ending that seems contrived, in a cunning way to provocatively conclude a film. 

A film that, even though it apparently wants to tell nothing, manages to stylistically describe old themes (alienation, boredom, unjustified spleen, and couple crisis) that are always very modern and rooted in our being  and, at the same time, reflect on the filmic and its infinite possibilities.
This is where Dumont plays with the viewer: aware of being a pain in the neck, he nonetheless poses interesting reflections and, in the end, as far as I'm concerned, this mysterious object called "Twentynine Palms," after all, left its mark on me. And I quite like it too.