It’s grim up North everywhere apparently.

The opening thirty minutes of Flanders coolly observe near-mute Demester (the bearish Boidin) indifferently plough the fields and his girlfriend Barbe (Leroux).

Angry at Demester’s off-handedness Barbe hooks up with, among others, local gigolo Blondel (Cretel), but both he and laugh-a-decade Demester are soon whisked away to the barren deserts of an unnamed country to do battle.

Winner of the Jury Prize at the 2006 Cannes Film Festival, Flanders is hard work for anyone expecting a typical war movie, or just a typical movie.

The first half hour has the scantest amount of dialogue, while the blistering battle scenes and war atrocities (including gang rape and castration) are going to turn some audiences right off.

Dumont mixes in lashings of metaphor with the joyless rutting and blown off body parts, but Flanders is not nearly as clever as he would like to think.

Flanders is where unknown numbers of soldiers perished in World War 1, and Dumont clearly links that pointless war with Bush and Blair’s Iraqi horrorshow.

There also seems to be something going on with Barbe boffing anything with a pulse, but whatever it is remains vague.

Where Flanders fails most is in its “war makes fascists of us all” message: Demester is a thuggish brute before he gets into battle, and everything Dumont moans about here was said with more fun and flamboyance in Starship Troopers.

Yet, a handful of scenes are worthwhile. The anachronistic image of mounted cavalry marching into war among tanks and helicopters is impressive, and the blistering battle sequences rack up tension to an almost unbearable degree, particularly at the end when local guerrillas turn the tables on Demester’s sqaud.

DP Yves Cape captures the bleak landscapes of Flanders and the bleached-out, unforgiving terrains of Tunisia brilliantly, but Flanders is all flash no bang. Stick with Saving Private Ryan, Apocalypse Now or Paths of Glory.

Rob Daniel