Flanders on AllMovie

A man's reluctance to express his emotions has unfortunate consequences in both love and war in this drama from filmmaker Bruno Dumont. Barbe (Adelaide Leroux) is a pretty young woman living in a small village in rural France. Barbe loves Andre (Samuel Boidin), a rough-hewn farmhand who doesn't say much and isn't comfortable sharing his feelings for her in any way other than sex. Frustrated by Andre's inability to show affection, Barbe vents her anger by sleeping with other men, and when Andre is drafted into the Army, he finds Barbe is saying goodbye to another of her lovers, Blondel (Henri Cretel), at the same time she's saying farewell to him. Andre and Blondel find themselves serving in the same outfit as they're sent to an unnamed Middle Eastern nation, where the grim circumstances of war wears away their humanity as they rape and murder civilians. Meanwhile at home, Barbe discovers she's pregnant with Blondel's child, and begins experiencing a nervous breakdown. Flanders received its world premier at the 2006 Cannes Film Festival.