‘I haven’t seen so many people debating the ending of a film since Bergman,” a movie insider remarked over lunch the other day.
She was referring to the finale of “Humanite,“ French director-writer Bruno Dumont’s extraordinary murder mystery, which opens Wednesday at Film Forum (on Houston Street, between Sixth Avenue and Varick Street).
Is the not-too-bright, small-town police inspector who is investigating the gruesome rape and murder of an 11-year-old girl also the killer? And is the entire 148-minute movie reality or just the cop’s fantasy?
We put those questions to Dumont when he was in New York last week.
“A filmmaker never should answer that kind of question,” he told Cine File through a translator. “There’s no secret [in the film]. I give the viewers the facts and they think what they want.”
“Humanite” took three prizes at Cannes in 1999. It also was booed by a large number of critics at a press screening there. Some laughed at scenes not meant to be funny.
“I dislike that reaction,” said the 42-year-old Dumont. “When that kind of thing happens, you wonder why. But at the same time, it was the Cannes Film Festival, and things like that happen there. Once you realize that, you don’t care so much.”
How did French critics treat “Humanite” when it opened in Paris in October?
“There was an extreme division between those who loved it and those who hated it,” Dumont said. “But as time goes by, it’s getting better. They go back and see the movie one more time, and they change. It happens very often.
“The most encouraging thing is that sales in foreign countries are doing very well. I feel very good about that. Films are universal, and it’s terrible for a movie to stay in its own country and not be seen abroad.”
The cast of “Humanite” – Dumont’s second feature – is made up entirely of non-professionals from the sleepy hamlet in northern France where the movie was shot. (“You can’t mix professionals and non-professionals,” Dumont explained.)
Two of them – Emmanuel Schotte as the male cop and Severine Caneele as a voluptuous woman given to passionate lovemaking – took acting awards at Cannes. In real life, Schotte is an accountant and Caneele is a factory worker.
“I found them at random, wandering in the street,” Dumont reported.
He also used amateurs for his first feature, “The Life of Jesus” (1997), which was set in a small town.
“Once I know where I’m going to shoot, I look for non-actors in that area.”
Several reviews have cited vererable French filmmaker Robert Bresson, who died last year at age 98, as the key influence on “Humanite.”
Not so, proclaimed an annoyed Dumont when we brought up the subject.
“I don’t give a s – – – about Bresson. It’s getting on my nerves.”
Before turning to film, Dumont taught philosophy in Lille, a city of 190,000 in northern France. He’s since moved to Paris – but he is “not ready” to shoot a movie there.
Next up for Dumont will be a French-financed, English-language pic set in California and featuring “very famous people.”
Just who they are, Dumont is not ready to divulge.
V.A. Musetto is film editor ofThe Post. He can be e-mailed at[email protected].