Based on documents compiled by leading French philosopher Michel Foucault, this unique and original film charts the gruesome
events which took place in a Normandy village in 1835, when a young man, Pierre Rivière, murdered his mother, sister and
brother before fleeing to the countryside. With a cast made up of real-life villagers from the area where the events took
place, the detailed re-enactments and careful attention to the gestures of their ancestors serve to create an intense
and sometimes disturbing atmosphere of hyper-realism.
Details of the crime and of the trial that followed are told from varied perspectives, including the written confession of
Pierre himself, and form a rich and complex narrative that interrogates the concepts of 'truth' and 'history'. Radical,
bold and uncompromising, director René Allio's extraordinary work (which is itself the subject of the documentary Back to
Normandy by Nicolas Philibert, who served as Allio's assistant) is at one and the same time an ethnographic enquiry, an
historical reconstruction, and an unflinching portrait of psychopathology and its aftermath.
The DVD is out now and retails for £19.99, but is currently on Amazon at the link above for £14.99.
News page content input by Dominic Robinson, 2008.
DVDs reviewed by the editor are watched on a Panasonic TXW32R4 32" widescreen TV
connected to either a Creative Dxr2 DVD-ROM player or Microsoft Xbox and
played through a Sony STR-DB930 amplifier.
PC games reviewed by the editor are on:
Since Nov 2005: Intel Pentium D 830 3.0Ghz, 1Gb RAM, 128Mb nVidia GeForce 6700XL, Windows XP
Since Aug 2003: Intel Pentium 4 2.66Ghz, 512Mb RAM, 128Mb GeForce4 MX440 graphics, Windows XP
Since May 2003: Intel Pentium 4 2.6Ghz, 512Mb RAM, 128Mb ATI Radeon 9600TX graphics, Windows XP
Since Jun 2002: Intel Pentium III 600Mhz, 384Mb RAM, Windows 98 SE, 64Mb ATI Radeon 8500LE
Since May 2000: Intel Pentium III 600Mhz, 384Mb RAM, Windows 98 SE, Voodoo 3 3000 AGP
