{"id":459302,"date":"2026-05-21T01:28:08","date_gmt":"2026-05-21T01:28:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/459302\/"},"modified":"2026-05-21T01:28:08","modified_gmt":"2026-05-21T01:28:08","slug":"red-rocks-review-bruno-dumonts-french-riviera-arthouse-kids-flick","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/459302\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Red Rocks’ Review: Bruno Dumont’s French Riviera Arthouse Kids Flick"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tYou can call French auteur Bruno Dumont<\/a> many things: profound, pretentious, visionary, a master of rural poverty porn, an iconoclast of contemporary arthouse cinema, an overrated bore. One thing you can\u2019t call him is unoriginal.<\/p>\n

\n\tEvery Dumont movie is a new experiment \u2014 sometimes fascinating, sometimes infuriating, oftentimes both at once. His previous feature, The Empire<\/a>, was, of all things, a Star Wars spoof filled with sex, snarky humor and tons of CGI, including a Gothic cathedral that transformed into a spaceship. Few people wound up seeing it, but those who did are unlikely to forget it (that is, if they stayed till the end).<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tRed Rocks\t\t<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t\t\tThe Bottom Line<\/p>\n

\tArthouse for tots.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\tVenue: Cannes Film Festival (Directors\u2019 Fortnight)
Cast: Kaylon Lancel, Kelsie Verdeilles, Louise Podolski, Mohamed Coly, Alessandro Piquera, Meryl Pires
Director, screenwriter, editor: Bruno Dumont
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t1 hour 31 minutes\n\t\t<\/p>\n

\n\tHis latest effort, Red Rocks (Les Roches rouges), is about as far from The Empire as you can get. Stripped down to the point of pure minimalism, it\u2019s a docu-style drama starring a bunch of kids between the ages of five and seven. Picture Rebel Without a Cause with only the threadbarest of plots, and with a cast that\u2019s probably just learning how to read, and you\u2019ll get a vague idea.<\/p>\n

\n\tAs with each Dumont venture, this one is stunningly shot (by DP Carlos Alfonso Corral, The Damned<\/a>), setting the action amid breathtaking C\u00f4te d\u2019Azur vistas where the gang wiles away their summer days. Favoring short lenses and natural light, the film\u2019s impressive aesthetic is probably its biggest selling point. <\/p>\n

\n\tOtherwise, what happens in Red Rocks is not exactly Sesame Street material, although Dumont thankfully avoids having his tykes endure the kinds of things you see in some of his other movies, which tend to involve atrocities like rape and mutilation. Here, the pint-sized protagonists hang out, goof around and break a few rules, such as jumping off a series of dazzling natural cliffs that line the Mediterranean.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe leader of this Gallic sandlot is G\u00e9o (Kaylon Lancel), a feisty baby blond who rides around on his mini-moped like he rules the place. Not unlike the hero of Dumont\u2019s 1997 breakthrough, The Life of Jesus, G\u00e9o is a badass who says very little \u2014 though this may be due to the fact that he\u2019s, well, five. Along with gamins-in-crime Rouben (Mohamed Coly) and Manon (Louise Podolski), he\u2019s enjoying the sunbaked southern French vibes when he crosses paths with a new girl his age, Eve (Kelsie Verdeilles).<\/p>\n

\n\tFrom there, Red Rocks turns into a tale of puppy love told through Dumont\u2019s typically distanced approach, which doesn\u2019t exactly drag the viewer in. Once the novelty of seeing cute kids act out an adult drama wears off, the film can feel pretty thin, even if it benefits from some of the offbeat humor of the director\u2019s terrific TV series, Li\u2019l Quinquin<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe comic tone is especially on display in a long sequence that has G\u00e9o and Eve skipping town to take a train across the border into Italy, where the latter visits her grandparents in a seaside mansion. Suddenly we\u2019re watching an old man take tennis lessons while his trio of Russian hunting dogs are jumping around the court snatching balls away. Who knows what this has to do with the rest of the film, but at least it\u2019s fun.<\/p>\n

\n\tAs in any tragic romance, our underaged hero eventually finds himself threatened by a jealous rival, B (Alessandro Piquera), who\u2019s a good head taller than G\u00e9o and perhaps a year or two older. The two cross paths during a big showdown at the seashore that features some of the raw violence Dumont is known for, though it\u2019s much more pared down and ultimately rather harmless.<\/p>\n

\n\tDespite some late bloodletting, Red Rocks doesn\u2019t go nearly as far as the auteur\u2019s other films, which is definitely a good thing. G\u00e9o and his buds are too adorable for that, and it\u2019s highly unlikely their parents would have let them get tortured on screen. Or perhaps Dumont, who won Cannes<\/a>\u2019 Grand Prix du Jury back in 1999 for his brutally realistic drama, L\u2019Humanit\u00e9, is finally softening with age. What he isn\u2019t doing \u2014 and this is a good thing \u2014 is losing his edge.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"You can call French auteur Bruno Dumont many things: profound, pretentious, visionary, a master of rural poverty porn,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":459303,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[199085,47241,173028,10532,195171,93,61,60,270],"class_list":["post-459302","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-bruno-dumont","tag-cannes","tag-cannes-2026","tag-cannes-film-festival","tag-cannes-film-festival-reviews","tag-entertainment","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-movies"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/459302","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=459302"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/459302\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/459303"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=459302"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=459302"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=459302"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}