Cannes Film Review: ‘Joan of Arc’

You have to hand it to Bruno Dumont, France’s dark prince of dour auteurism: He never makes the same film twice, even when he does, to all intents and purposes, make the same film twice. Two years ago, he offered his own singular contribution to cinema’s well-stocked canon of Joan of Arc dramas: As a rare take on the peasant-turned-saint’s formative years, “Jeannette, the Childhood of Joan of Arc” would have stood out even if Dumont hadn’t set it to a heavy-metal song score, perhaps to compensate for the story’s lack of steely battle armor. Memorably bizarre but mostly bludgeoning, it left few but the most dedicated Dumont diehards begging for more — but he was never going to leave the story half-told, even if a sequel would inevitably have to cover far more familiar turf.Enter the starkly titked “Joan of Arc,” which puts away ...

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