TWENTYNINE PALMS

Year: 2003
USA: Wellspring
UK: Tartan Films
Cast: Katia Golubeva, David Wissak
Director: Bruno Dumont
Country: France
Language: French (English subtitles)
USA & UK: 119 mins
UK Certificate: N/C
USA Release Date: 9 April 2004 (Limited Release)
UK Release Date: 29 July 2005 (Limited Release - London, ICA)
US Distributor

Synopsis

Twentynine Palms is a small, remote American town deep in the desert of central California. It provides the unique setting (rendered in gorgeous Cinemascope) for this darkly comedic chronicle of the romantic and sexual life of a young couple in love.

Denny a photographer and his girlfriend Katia leave Los Angeles to find a desert setting for a magazine photo shoot. Using a motel in Twentynine Palms as their base, they spend their days scouting the Joshua Tree Desert and losing their way on the roads and trails behind the wheel of their 4x4. Their trip is filled with bouts of frantic sex, impassioned fights, and hasty reconciliations, until an act of desperation leads to an unforeseen and brutal climax.

The film provides an intensely intimate voyage into the heart of a couple, allowing the viewer to experience both the bliss of pure happiness as well as the desperate anger that so often lurks inside lovers' hearts.

TWENTYNINE PALMS is the third film from Bruno Dumont, director of THE LIFE OF JESUS and HUMANITe, which won of the Grand Jury Prize, Best Actor, and Best Actress awards at the 1999 Cannes Film Festival.