Product Details

• Actors: Yekaterina Golubeva, David Wissak
• Directors: Bruno Dumont
• Writers: Bruno Dumont
• Producers: Allen Bain, Axel Möbius, Christel Brunn, Christoph Thoke, Darren Goldberg
• Format: Color, Dolby, DVD, Letterboxed, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC
• Language: English, French
• Subtitles: English
• Region: Region 1 (U.S. and Canada only. Read more about DVD formats.)
  
• Aspect Ratio: 2.35:1
• Number of discs: 1
• Rated: NR (Not Rated)
• Studio: Wellspring
• DVD Release Date: September 21, 2004
• Run Time: 119 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 2.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (31 customer reviews)
• ASIN: B0002KQNPO
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #65,610 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)
• For more information about "Twentynine Palms" visit the Internet Movie Database (IMDb)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com,

No one can accuse director Bruno Dumont of taking the easy road. Dumont's Life of Jesus and L'Humanite are fascinating, but they test the comfort zone of even the most devoted art-house maven. Twentynine Palms serves up more of Dumont's uncompromising rigor, this time set in America. A couple scout locations in the desert around Joshua Tree, and spend most of their time fighting or having sex. The frankness of the director's approach to sex does not prepare one for the shock of the truly bleak final reels. This Last Tango in Zabrieskie Point has a lulling, creepy power before it reaches those shocks, although actors David Wissak and Katia Golubeva are perhaps not as compelling as Dumont wants them to be. Of course, he's showing empty people traversing one of the emptiest places on earth--so maybe it fits. In any case, this film will shake you if you stick with it. --Robert Horton

Product Description

From Bruno Dumont, one of the leading visionaries of world cinema, comes Twentynine Palms, a mesmerizing story of love, sex and evil set deep in the Joshua Tree desert. While scouting for a photo shoot location, an American photographer (David Wissak) and his Russian/French girlfriend (Katia Golubeva) spend their days engaging in impassioned fights, hasty reconciliations and frequent bouts of sex, until a shocking act of desperation leads to an unforeseen and brutal climax. DVD extras include: 5.1 Extraction, Trailer, Interview with Director, EPK, Making of Reel, Subtitle Control

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

24 of 27 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Curious, Unsettling, and Highly Questionable, May 18, 2005

By 

Stephen C. Rife "Stephen Rife" (Saint Paul, MN United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Twentynine Palms (DVD)

When I rented TWENTYNINE PALMS, I knew it would showcase Bruno Dumont's taste for dispassionate portrayals, violence of various sorts, and shock. In spite of this mental preparation, this very atmospheric film built to a grotesque resolution that left me, a seasoned viewer, rattled. Unfortunately, the shock and awe it achieves is short lived. 'PALMS is modeled on the horror film, but, like many of its American cousins, the horror it achieves failed to haunt me. The narrative as a whole left me rattled, yes, but there was also an unsettled feeling, as if a cynic had just talked my ear off. I wondered, "Is there really something to this guy's story, or is just him?" You may also get the sense that the horror of 'PALMS is more about the worldview of the director (or his view of America), rather than the world his storytelling creates.

Sam Peckinpaw's STRAW DOGS is in ways a similar but superior film. I can admire 'DOGS for its many strengths, so long as I avoid viewing it as the MAN-AS-ANIMAL fable that Peckinpaw intended. It isn't that I disagree with his view of humans as domesticated animals. Rather, I see 'DOGS as a rare example of violent drama and technical virtuosity transcending the simplicity of its maker's defense; whether Peckinpaw has a point or not seems beside the point. Of course, the trick with any argument is in having good evidence. In pressing one's point of view, there is often, in or out of the filmic context, an artful description of a scene/scenario, one that reflects the viewer's position. In this way, films have the strange ability to create their own myths, their own arguments. To invest a film with one's views too forcibly can dull the work's independent life with the sententiousness of fables.

Watching TWENTYNINE PALMS, it seems impossible to avoid questioning Dumont's personal views. This is partly due to the fact that so many of the events described in the film are implausible. Lacking believable characters and action, one naturally develops a sense that the director is revealing something to us that we haven't seen; something unique to his vision. If the strange behavior of the two principles was about their uniqueness and their relationship (e.g. as outsiders) then why would Dumont undercut their characterization, denying us a belief in them as individuals, or, more profoundly, as points of identification? I gradually came to view the two principles as an every-couple, with private rhythms and misunderstandings that might appear absurd if made public. And indeed, such details of their relationship are hinted at without the benefit of a backstory for us to know them more precisely. So the couple is particular and thus strange, but lacking particulars/details their value becomes more symbolic. They seem to be a snapshot of human coupling in its most bestial simplicity, dimly framed even in bright sunlight. This seemed like a worthy focus, but Dumont forces it to play against a theme of violence, both seen and unseen. The violent atmosphere of the film was something I couldn't account for until the resolution, and even then with difficulty.

Toward the end of film, we're given a horrific equation of two orgasms: that of the male protagonist and that of his rapist, the film's principle antagonist (aside from the desert). Both orgasms are shown to be dangerous, powerful, and unspeakable (or, at least, not clearly worded). This equation discounts the context in which the orgasms occur, leaving the viewer with no reliable distinction of the protagonists from their insanely hostile environment. Clearly, the bourgeois, carefree lifestyle of the couple is set up to be cut down (a horror convention), but Dumont makes the attack personal in the most perverse way. From early in the film on, the protagonists suggest an inner horror, which is unmitigated by their lovemaking, and perhaps even feeds on their relationship. The irrationality of their environment makes the couple our most recognizable guides on this strange road trip, but they demonstrate their own measure of insanity. The male half of the couple betrays an undercurrent of sadism that eventually explodes as an act of sexualized murder. The female's deviance is less clearly defined, but there are several scenes in which she is shown inviting harm. If our trip, as it seems, is through a kind of anti-Eden, and our guides are an every-couple, with no structured identity of their own, then their deviancy would suggest a kind of universal infection, or nature, rather than an aberration of character. This would also render the criminality of the final scenes uncertain, in light of their amoral setting.

Some would say that the best criterion for judging a horror film is whether it horrifies, regardless of how. This is an unsettling film. It is also an especially tasteless one. In watching this DVD, it may be useful to some viewers that Dumont can be found rationalizing his use of violence (and his violence as an artist) in an interview, in a director's statement, and in the course of the film itself.

18 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars "there are no beautiful women; there are no strong men", September 30, 2004

By 

J Eric Miller - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Twentynine Palms (DVD)

Referencing the American remake of Breathless and Deliverance (and not in the obvious way) without commenting on them, Twentynine Palms offers up shocking finale for which even the promise of a shocking finale will not prepare you. Often, sudden and violent endings feel desperately tacked on so that audiences have something to talk about and distributors have something by which to sell the film. In this case, however, the finale really causes you to reexamine the material. Bruno calls this an experimental horror film; his interview and statement of purpose are a bit overly-grave and under deep-he repeats himself on but a few points and says very little beyond the idea that he thinks people are really animals. Though that is basic stuff I give the benefit of the doubt to him and assume that we are getting a poor translation. In short, I think the point of the film is better realized in this film itself than it is in Bruno's translated discussion of it.

The demonstration of every human's vulnerability in this film is so graphically and unexpectedly rendered as to make it, in fact, one of the more terrifying films I've seen as an adult. It doesn't mean to remind us of the monster in the closet or the monster in our own hearts so much as it means to remind us that we are flesh and blood exposed to all the monstrosities of the world, regardless the strength of our minds, the intelligence of our emotions. In the end, brutal death is waiting and "deserve has nothing to do with it".

It brings to mind the Charles Bukowski quote: "There are no beautiful women; there are not strong men". For in this film, everything is broken down.

14 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Gruelling..., July 31, 2004

By 

Joe Bowman (St. Louis) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Twentynine Palms (DVD)

Described by one critic at the Venice Film Festival as the "Brown Bunny" of that year's fest, one finds themselves at a loss of how to accurately describe the film without giving much away, or even giving the film it's justice. Comparisons to "The Brown Bunny," a film I admittedly adored, seem solely justified in that both films are longing, nearly-silent meditations on disturbing subject matter (both by arguably masterful, challenging, and, albeit, pretentious filmmakers). "Twentynine Palms" follows an American photographer and his French girlfriend through the California desert in their existential, stark journey for... that I'm not sure. It's almost hard to defend an appreciation for the film, when it seems so easy to dismiss the film as overtly brutal and (as some would think) boring... and even pointless. Yet Bruno Dumont, who previously caused quiet controversy over his equally-startling other films Humanite and La Vie de Jesus, makes "Twentynine Palms" fascinating in its study of these two individuals (or perhaps two cultures, depending on how you disect the film). Fans -- granted there probably aren't many -- of Dumont's previous films should find the film especially intoxicating, but those uninterested in challenging, shocking motion pictures should probably steer clear... at their own loss.