Bruno Dumont’s French Riviera Arthouse Kids Flick

You can call French auteur Bruno Dumont many things: profound, pretentious, visionary, a master of rural poverty porn, an iconoclast of contemporary arthouse cinema, an overrated bore. One thing you can’t call him is unoriginal.

Every Dumont movie is a new experiment — sometimes fascinating, sometimes infuriating, oftentimes both at once. His previous feature, The Empire, 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).

His 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’s 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’s probably just learning how to read, and you’ll get a vague idea.

As with each Dumont venture, this one is stunningly shot (by DP Carlos Alfonso Corral, The Damned), setting the action amid breathtaking Côte d’Azur vistas where the gang wiles away their summer days. Favoring short lenses and natural light, the film’s impressive aesthetic is probably its biggest selling point.

Otherwise, 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.

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

From there, Red Rocks turns into a tale of puppy love told through Dumont’s typically distanced approach, which doesn’t 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’s terrific TV series, Li’l Quinquin.

The comic tone is especially on display in a long sequence that has Géo 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’re 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’s fun.

As in any tragic romance, our underaged hero eventually finds himself threatened by a jealous rival, B (Alessandro Piquera), who’s a good head taller than Géo 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’s much more pared down and ultimately rather harmless.

Despite some late bloodletting, Red Rocks doesn’t go nearly as far as the auteur’s other films, which is definitely a good thing. Géo and his buds are too adorable for that, and it’s highly unlikely their parents would have let them get tortured on screen. Or perhaps Dumont, who won Cannes’ Grand Prix du Jury back in 1999 for his brutally realistic drama, L’Humanité, is finally softening with age. What he isn’t doing — and this is a good thing — is losing his edge.