Let's be realistic.

everything you have heard about this movie is true.

A different way of telling a story

Great example of an old-fashioned, pure-at-heart escapist event movie that doesn't pretend to be anything that it's not and has boat loads of fun being its own ludicrous self.

I was wary of this one. It seemed a lot like this trend in recent world cinema that I don't like, where the camera observes unemployed losers who do little besides screw, smoke, and ride around on mopeds not looking for jobs. These films rarely provide any interesting insights, or even interesting characters. So the subject matter had me prejudiced against this movie from the start. Fortunately, Dumont does have some insight into these people. I wouldn't say it's a lot of insight, nor would I say that the film has much new to say. However, the characters come off as real people. A couple of minor complaints: I thought that the lead actress, Marjorie Cottreel, was far too beautiful to fit in with the rest of this picture. And the hardcore sex scenes were entirely unnecessary. And I didn't need to see Mom's vagina, either.

In a small town in France, the epileptic Freddy (David Douche) is an unemployed young man, who spends his time doing nothing but flirting and having sex with his girlfriend Marie (Marjorie Cottreel) and riding motorcycle with his idle and shallow friends. When the Arabian Kader (Kader Chaatouf) courts Marie, Freddy explodes his racism against Kader in a violent way. I saw this movie for the first time in 04 Jan 2001 and today I have decided to see it again, after watching 'L' Humanité', from the same director. My opinion about 'La Vie de Jésus' has not changed: it is a good tale of idleness, intolerance, violence and racism. However, I do not like explicit sex in art movies. I believe it is unnecessary and pure opportunism of the director, raising some sort of polemic subject to promote his film. In the end, the actress who participates in this type of scene is the unique person who gets burnt in this industry. Although being the lead actress of a film awarded in many festivals of cinema, see the empty career of the gorgeous actress Marjorie Cottreel in IMDb. 'Le Pornographe', '9 Songs' (which I have not seen yet) and 'La Vie de Jésus' are ridiculous showing scenes of explicit sex. As my friend Ricardo, who also loves movies, uses to say, 'better off watching Private, John Stagliano's 'Buttman' or Rocco Siffredi flicks if the viewer wants to see real sex on the screen'. My vote is seven.Title (Brazil): 'A Vida de Jesus' ('The Life of Jesus')

Each scene of this film grabs you. You want to *see* what is happening. As in Dumont's other film "L'Humanite", he has an intuitive grasp of what the viewer wants to see, where the human eye would naturally want to look. He is also a sensitive observer who understands human behavior in all its richness. Even though the main characters of his films are lowlives who we would probably not have much in common with, we appreciate them as human beings. He never makes fun of or degrades his characters. I disagree with the reviewer who said there is no development. I think there is a tremendous amount of development, but unlike a Hollywood film, he does not announce it with a surging musical score, a change in lighting, and other such cheap tricks. Instead, we observe a character moving beyond the grief of his brother's death when he bites off the knot of a mourning cloth he tied to his wrist. This is a great film by a great director.

Bruno Dumonts "La Vie de Jésus" is one of the best movies I saw that year. It's a very gripping tale of a group of bored, at first glance no-good youngsters, who end up in a lot of trouble because of their racism. To me, without being a patriot, this isn't really a French, but a Belgian movie. The setting (French Flanders), but also the themes it deals with, the environment (no foreigner can fully grasp the horror of all those old people sitting on their chairs in the doorstep, waiting for something to happen, staring at the occasional passer-by). But whatever country it is made in, it is a strong story, filmed in a raw way, which very much fits the rawness of the characters in the movie. If you take under notice that all the actors were amateurs, yet they manage to make lots of so-called pros look like the real amateurs, you have to give the director credit for that.