The Empire Review: French Coast Meets Space Opera

A lonely fishing village on France’s Opal Coast becomes ground zero for a cosmic tug‑of‑war, where everyday routines collide with interstellar ambition. Under windswept skies and among weathered boats, Bruno Dumont stages a minimal‑ism‑meets‑spectacle narrative that hooks you from the first shot of sand dunes meeting the sea.

Here, two alien factions—the radiant Ones and the shadow‑draped Zeros—have descended in human guise to claim Freddy, nicknamed “the Wain,” a toddler prophesied to tip the balance of power. On one side stands Jony (Brandon Vlieghe), a taciturn fisherman bound to Beelzebub’s dark empire; on the other, Jane (Anamaria Vartolomei), a warrior for the Ones who finds her loyalty tested by the village’s raw humanity. Hovering above them are the queen of Good (Camille Cottin) and the devilish Beelzebub (Fabrice Luchini), each issuing orders that echo through the dunes.

The Empire marries down‑to‑earth observation—market stalls, radio chatter, the rhythmic hauling of nets—with bursts of high‑concept fantasy: Gothic cathedral ships, light‑blade combat and writhing black‑oil demons. It examines how rigid dualities crumble when faced with flesh‑and‑blood lives. As both a satirical riff on the “Chosen One” saga and an inquiry into moral absolutes, Dumont’s film raises ordinary moments to epic scale.

Shorelines and Starships: Mapping a Hybrid World

From the first shot of wind‑swept dunes meeting gray sea, The Empire anchors its cosmic ambitions in the everyday life of a Northern French fishing village. The ramshackle homes and weathered boats feel lived‑in—so much that I half expected to hear gulls and the creak of nets like I did as a kid visiting Brittany. Market stalls bustle with vendors selling fresh mackerel, and Jony’s routine—hauling pots from his boat at dawn—grounds the story in familiar rhythms before any starships appear.

Suddenly, Gothic spires and Baroque cornices loom overhead: the Ones’ cathedral‑ship descends in a shaft of light, its stained‑glass windows glowing beneath churning clouds, while the Zeros’ Palace of Versailles‑in‑space floats above in ornate grandeur. Dumont’s team marries miniature practical models to digital effects so seamlessly that you sense the weight of carved stone even as CGI sparkles around it. It’s a technical trick that calls to mind Denis Villeneuve’s care for texture in big‑budget sci‑fi, yet here it serves a local tableau as much as a spectacle.

Ritual gestures thread these worlds together: villagers bow or kneel at Line’s passing, an echo of alien devotion, and the undersea cathedral—revealed through a camera push‑in—becomes a conduit between myth and mud. That contrast underlines how small acts of faith can feel epic when viewed through Dumont’s lens.

He shoots the village in a documentary style—hand‑held frames, natural light, unobtrusive sound design—then switches to measured, symmetric compositions for cosmic council scenes, complete with soaring organ chords. Mixing nonprofessional locals and Camille Cottin or Fabrice Luchini in the same frame blurs genre lines, so that you’re never sure if you’re watching independent verité or a mainstream space opera. This blend of approaches gives The Empire its singular texture of real and unreal.

Weaving Earth and Ether—A Three‑Act Odyssey

The Empire begins quietly, with Jony’s boat cutting through gray waters as dawn light dances on nets and sand. His chance meeting with Line feels lifted from a romance drama—her laughter echoing in the dunes—but Dumont undercuts this with whispered cosmic stakes. When Jony cradles baby Freddy, the subtlest camera tilt and a deep, off‑screen voice hint that “the Wain” is more than any ordinary child. I’m reminded of how Moonlight used small moments to foreshadow larger conflicts, and here that technique roots a mythic prophecy in mud‑caked boots.

Soon the Zeros assemble: Jony’s calm devotion cracks under orders from Beelzebub, and we learn Line is allied with darker forces. In parallel, Jane’s descent from the cathedral‑ship feels like a hero’s journey sketched across two worlds. Her sidekick Rudy provides levity—his fumbling swordplay recalls Pedro Almodóvar’s gift for comic relief—before blunt clashes turn deadly. Dumont alternates between intimate village vignettes and formal council sequences aboard Gothic and Versailles‑in‑space vessels, a dual narrative that keeps you off‑balance and curious.

The shoreline battle delivers a stark, almost ritualistic spectacle: white horses trampling dunes as Ones wield humming blades. Above, the cathedral and palace ships collide, their architecture folding into shadow until a sudden black hole swallows them whole. That anticlimax, with gendarmes gazing upward in stunned silence, transforms what could be a tidy victory into a question: who truly holds agency when gods and monsters depart?

Dumont balances unhurried, observational beats—market chatter, dragging oars—with jarring bursts of fantastical violence. Editing shifts from long takes to rapid cuts in combat, and sound design moves from wind‑blown silence to roaring engines and echoing chants. The tonal jumps, from deadpan humor to near‑operatic fury, propel the story forward, echoing how indie filmmakers like Kelly Reichardt blend stillness with sudden dramatic turns. This rhythm keeps you alert, never settling into a single mood for too long.

Moral Grey Zones Amid Cosmic Codes

The Empire sets up a stark contrast between Ones and Zeros as avatars of “good” and “evil,” yet Dumont quickly undercuts that simplicity. Early on, Jane declares that every villager “is a balance of good and evil,” a line that stuck with me long after the credits rolled. In today’s age of digital logic and social‑media echo chambers, we often reduce people to binary profiles.

Here, the film insists on human messiness: Jony’s devotion to his cause collapses when he cradles Freddy in tired arms, and Jane’s rigid ideals waver when she tastes a shared cigarette with a fisherman. It reminded me of Denis Villeneuve’s work in Blade Runner 2049, where replicants blur the line between human and machine, suggesting moral categories fracture under real emotion.

The conflict between power and uplift feels lifted from debates about technocratic solutions versus populist rebellion. The Queen of Good speaks in digitally altered tones, her words flowing like policy briefs on abstract “equality and solidarity.” By contrast, Beelzebub’s embodied cruelty—Fabrice Luchini’s theatrical tics and a mocking jazz soundtrack—echoes authoritarian rhetoric that depends on spectacle and fear. Dumont’s editing places their proclamations side by side, prompting us to ask if any promise of improvement can stand when stripped of flesh‑and‑blood empathy.

Anchoring cosmic stakes in a fishing‑village microcosm gives the film its emotional weight. I’m a sucker for stories that use small communities to explore big ideas—think Beasts of the Southern Wild—and here the daily rituals, from market haggling to sunrise nets, gain mythic resonance under an alien sky. That juxtaposition turns local customs into acts of resistance against unseen powers.

Finally, Dumont returns us to carnal reality. A brief but charged intimate scene between Jane and Jony asserts that physical connection remains our truest revolt against abstract doctrine. Cinematographer David Chambille captures the grain of sand underfoot, the bend of a blade of grass pressed between fingers, while the score replaces orchestral pomp with muted wind and water calls. In those textures, the film stakes its claim on humanity’s ungovernable heart.

Painted Realities—A Cinematic Palette of Earth and Ether

David Chambille’s widescreen frames feel alive. In village scenes he favors long takes that let sunlight spill over sand and fishing nets, recalling the epic openness of Lawrence of Arabia yet grounded in indie immediacy. When the Ones’ cathedral‑ship descends, lighting shifts to crisp blues and high‑contrast shadows, as if Chambille aimed spotlights at every stained‑glass window. That shift guides our eye from dusty humanity to crystalline fantasy, and it never feels jarring—just a ticket between two worlds.

Production design treats history like raw material. The Gothic spires of Sainte‑Chapelle and the gilded halls of Versailles were scanned to serve as blueprints for alien vessels. On shore, ragged wooden boats and splintered docks sit beside tiny model ships that glow with CGI energy. I’ve worked on low‑budget sets where green screens swallow texture; here, Dumont’s team builds full‑size dunes and then layers digital accents so you sense real weight under every hovering arch.

Costume and makeup play a key role in identity. Zeros wear courtly doublets, lace collars tight around their throats—like if a medieval masque met Pan’s Labyrinth. Ones appear in diaphanous, luminescent fabrics that catch the wind, as much ritual garb as battlefield armor. Line and Jane’s designs shift from everyday denim to interstellar minimalism, charting their emotional journeys in cloth. Fabrice Luchini’s Beelzebub emerges in a jester’s motley, face painted pale—comic and grotesque, a living carnival beneath a black‑oil core.

Sound design stitches these elements together. Organ drones and Bach chorales rise beneath celestial portals, then give way to a scratchy jazz trio when Beelzebub takes human form. Lightsabre hums echo in cliffside caves, and village chatter hums under every sequence. I remember hearing a film’s ambient score on my first festival trip and feeling suddenly immersed—Dumont taps that same power, using sound to make you feel both earthbound and out among the stars.

Faces of the Cosmos—Anchoring the Fantastic in Flesh

Brandon Vlieghe’s Jony is a masterclass in understatement. His gaze at the dawn sea feels genuine—like someone I once knew from a summer fishing camp—before it hardens under Beelzebub’s orders. Vlieghe uses minimal dialogue, letting every furrowed brow and tension in his shoulders speak volumes about loyalty tested and worlds colliding.

Anamaria Vartolomei brings a quiet magnetism to Jane. In her first descent from the cathedral‑ship, she carries herself like a seasoned warrior, and yet her eyes soften in moments of human connection—particularly in a scene where she shares a smoke with Jony on a windswept bluff. That blend of poise and vulnerability reminded me of Rooney Mara’s work in Carol, grounding otherworldly duty in relatable emotion.

Camille Cottin’s Queen of Good moves with aristocratic ease, yet a flicker of bemusement when she impersonates the village mayor reveals a sly wit. She never breaks character, even as the script injects absurd lines, proving her comedic timing can rival her dramatic chops.

Fabrice Luchini steals every frame he occupies as Beelzebub: one moment, a sinuous shadow‑blob; the next, a harlequin‑costumed tour guide doing a macabre jig. His theatrical flare—equal parts vaudeville and horror—underscores the film’s playful critique of power.

Supporting performances by two nonprofessional gendarmes add warmth and humor: their genuine confusion at cosmic events feels like real people pressed into mythic roles. Villagers, too, bring a lived‑in authenticity that reminds us why Dumont blends pro talent with locals—to keep even the grandest spectacle rooted in everyday life.

Dumont’s Cosmic Canvas—Eccentricity Wears a Human Face

Bruno Dumont’s shift from the stark naturalism of La vie de Jésus to the playful spectacle of The Empire feels like discovering a new facet of a familiar artist. If Li’l Quinquin and Slack Bay planted seeds of surreal comedy amid real‑world settings, this latest work blooms into a full‑on fantasy riff without losing its grounding in non‑professional performers alongside names like Camille Cottin. That blend keeps every grand set piece tethered to something warm and lived‑in.

Tonally, Dumont balances dry wit with serious questions about power and belief. Scenes of Beelzebub droning on in baroque costume aren’t just comic relief—they reveal the absurdity of authority when stripped of heart. Conversely, moments of genuine human tenderness interrupt cosmic theatrics, reminding me why I keep returning to directors like Kelly Reichardt, who can pivot from silence to sudden emotional clarity.

The film gleefully toys with franchise tropes: light‑blade duels, floating cathedrals, dirigible‑palaces. Yet those icons land with a thud on muddy dunes, their grandeur undercut by local gestures—bows at the market, children peering through fishing nets—and by a final anticlimactic collapse of both fleets into a single void. It’s a smart flip on blockbuster spectacle, asking whether epic scale can survive everyday soil.

In positioning a tiny coastal community at the heart of galactic stakes, Dumont invites cinema to blur art‑house intimacy and space‑opera grandeur. The Empire feels like a blueprint for future films that refuse to choose between social commentary and imaginative daring, challenging us to rethink “us versus them” in stories and in life.

Full Credits

Director: Bruno Dumont

Writer: Bruno Dumont

Producers: Jean Bréhat, Bertrand Faivre

Production Companies: Tessalit Productions, Red Balloon Film, Ascent Film, Novak Prod, Rosa Filmes, Furyo Films, Shelter Prod, RTBF

Cast: Lyna Khoudri (Line), Anamaria Vartolomei (Jane), Camille Cottin (The Queen), Fabrice Luchini (Belzébuth), Brandon Vlieghe (Jony), Julien Manier (Rudy), Bernard Pruvost (Van der Weyden), Philippe Jore (Carpentier)

Director of Photography (Cinematographer): David Chambille

Editors: Bruno Dumont, Desideria Rayner