One day, he watches Domino and Joseph have sex. It’s a messy coupling with much fumbling and panting. We see everything from the first kiss, through all the pumping, and up to the final screams: there are no cuts. De Winter watches silently. He doesn’t take voyeuristic pleasure, nor does he find it remotely amusing. He regards sex with a strange combination of revulsion and fascination. It’s a dirty act, like going to the bathroom, but somehow, he can’t look away.

Dumont has left in the parts of life that most directors would cut out, or never film at all. The awkward moments where we don’t know what to say, the silent ones by ourselves, the purely physical ones in which bodies come together, do their business and part. They are all on display in their full, unedited glory. De Winter is keenly aware of this negative space. He pays more attention to these moments (an afternoon’s bike ride lets him silently observe the French countryside) than he does to the murder investigation. It’s as if he’s avoiding a bad memory by concentrating on the events preceding and following it.

Domino is strangely drawn to him. She invites him on her dates with Joseph, as if she were taking pity on the village idiot. They go to the beach one weekend, and there’s a shot of the three of them staring out to the sea. Dumont holds the shot with unrelenting tightness. It’s a stark, beautiful image – a mnemonic snapshot that is emblazoned in De Winter’s mind. While Domino isn’t attracted to De Winter, she’s curious about his sex life. At one point, she offers him her body. He rejects her, and as in an earlier scene, conjures up an image of a vagina ravaged by male brutality.

The murder investigation almost feels like an afterthought. Working with a corpulent police chief who’s always perspiring, De Winter interviews a gallery of locals who are either dim-witted or unwilling to help. The inquest goes nowhere. Everyone loses interest, including De Winter. Small details overshadow major events. In one scene, De Winter finds a farmer’s pig more interesting than the farmer he is supposed to interview.

As De Winter, first time actor Emmanuel Schotté doesn’t act so much as he lets the movie act upon him. He’s the proverbial blank slate – expressionless and quasi-mute. Dumont uses him as a subject on whom he projects everything. It’s an ambitious effort and it would have worked if Dumont only wanted to portray De Winter as a psychotic. But the undeniable human element calls for more and Schotte has neither the face nor the voice for it. As Domino, Séverine Caneele provides the much needed emotional balance to Schotte’s stolidity. Her sharp, angular face is neither beautiful nor homely. It arrests us with its honesty. Her body is voluptuous and a bit ravaged, and she’s not ashamed of it. Her final scene is the movie’s most emotionally direct. Having learned who the murderer is, she lets loose a torrent of tears and mucus as her face balls up into a tight red rage.

Humanité has confounded audiences worldwide. Audiences at Cannes booed it, but the jury liked it enough to give it three major awards, including best actor (Schotté), best actress (Caneele), and the Grand Jury Prize. In a recent interview, Dumont explained that he is forever "filming boring and uninteresting things… it’s the linking of images that makes things beautiful." True to form, Humanité’s story expands amoeba-like, absorbing characters, places and events that surround Pharaon De Winter’s existence. In isolation, each piece is ordinary, but connected they add up to something that’s not only weirdly fascinating, but alive and sadly human.