Bruno Dumont is a favorite son in Cannes, where his anti-intellectual pretensions and the use of nonactors in his films win jury prizes even though audiences don't always share the juries' enthusiasm. In "Flanders," he is back with more of the same: A film that had some French viewers talking back to the screen yet received scattered applause at the end. Pretentious to the core and lacking any context or credible characterizations, "Flanders" juxtaposes bucolic scenes of life in a farm community, featuring a clutch of dim-witted rustics, with scenes of utter barbarity in an unspecified war.

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