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Reviews of Recent Independent, Foreign, & Documentary Films in Theaters and DVD/Home Video
TWENTYNINE PALMS
With its explicit sex scenes and heavy-handed violence, Bruno Dumont's assaultive take on male
aggression is audacious but vacuous. Its slow pace, redundant and threadbare story line,
inexplicable character transitions, and one-dimensional archetypes make the film less than
engaging.
Cocky American David (Wissak, resembling a shaggy-haired Gérard Depardieau with
Marty Feldman's eyes), is on a vague scouting assignment in the California desert. He brings
along his girlfriend, the European Katia, played by Katia Golubeva, a wan and blank Michelle
Pfeiffer. What follows are typical and banal male/female interactions. He won't tell her what he is
thinking; she pouts. He won't ask for directions; she can't drive. When they are not holed up in a
cheap hotel watching Jerry Springer, they drive into the hazy desert. With repetitive scenes of their rambling road trip, Twentynine Palms is more like a Humvee commercial,
with plenty of hummers along the way. The sex is rough and one sided. In a swimming pool, David
holds Katia's head down underwater forcing her to give him oral sex. Throughout, they fight, have
sex, fight, have sex.... Eventually their relationship falls apart, even after Katia has given
David decibel-shattering fellatio. (And no, he doesn't reciprocate.) David, suddenly on a tirade,
angrily accuses her of acting like a princess and throws her out of the room. The audience is
not included in David and Katia's tacit conversations, and the meandering film feels longer because of their awkward improvisations. At one point, Katia inexplicably breaks into childish laughter,
revealing the actress's apparent discomfort more than anything else. Like the rest of the film, the
end is arbitrary, with a plot twist straight out of Deliverance. But by then, Twentynine Palms is most likely to provoke a shrug than a
shock. Kent Turner
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