Although set in Bruno Dumont’s home region of northern France, L’il Quinquin finds the writer-director in unexpected territory. The film is a arguably Dumont’s first comedy, and was made as a four-part TV miniseries.
Yet with its relaxed pacing, inconclusive plot and elegant widescreen cinematography, the movie doesn’t feel much like TV. And its humor is less a matter of overt gags than bemused attitude, which shows that the Dumont of Humanite and Hors Satan has barely relocated at all.
The story opens with mischievous Quinquin (Alane Delhaye), who looks to be around 10. He’s named for a 19th-century song that’s a sort of anthem for the remaining speakers of Picard, a vanishing language of the region. He sports a hearing aid and the sort of squashed, off-center nose usually seen only on boxers who’ve lost a few matches.
That schnoz is just the first of many remarkable physical characteristics. Dumont likes to work with nonprofessional actors, often cast for faces and bodies that exemplify human imperfection. This can verge on the exploitative, notably when the director employs (as he does here) people with obvious mental or neurological limitations.
The boy’s nose also suggests the history of violence written everywhere on the local landscape. Quinquin and girlfriend Eve (Lucy Carron) play around the abandoned seaside bunkers of World War II, where the boy searches for leftover bullets and grenades. None of the latter seem to be live, but Quinquin compensates by always being well-supplied with firecrackers.