By Walter Burkat ’16

In a continuing report on the Tournées Film Festival, the 2011 French film “Hors Satan” was shown last Wednesday night. Translated from French, “Hors Satan” means “Outside Satan,” and this title is all too appropriate for the story of a mysterious drifter who bonds with a disturbed girl from a rural French village.

The opening scene shows the drifter finding a nameless village and becoming emotionally -attached to the girl for no apparent reason. “Hors Satan” is extremely minimalist; the audience must use their imaginations to fill in the plot’s blank spots.

In a shocking act of violence, the drifter and the girl target a seemingly innocent man working in his dilapidated hovel. The execution appears to be random, but over its course, the movie subtly insinuates that he was the abusive stepfather of the girl. After the murder the police arrive in the village to investigate, but very little is revealed.

Throughout the film a guard persistently seeks the girl’s love, and the girl continuously rejects his unwanted advances. In mere utterances she conveys to the drifter that she wants the guard to suffer, and so the drifter finds the guard and tortures him mercilessly, but allows him to live for the time being. After the authorities have been called in once again, panic begins to brew in the small village. The drifter and the girl perform these heinous crimes unthinkingly, yet seem to elude the detection of the authorities every time.

The minimalist perspective of “Hors Satan” polarizes audiences because of its minimalist perspective of telling the story-  one either detests the lack of information or views it as an art form of cinematography. The limited dialogue, simplistic setting, lack of soundtrack and emphasis of natural sounds are what make this distinctive from many other films.