A ‘Monk’ like Existence for Filmmaker Dominik Moll

With a Friend Like Harry and Lemming feel like ages ago, so any news on filmmaker Dominik Moll for this detail hungry cinephile is good news. There is a brief mention today that the under-appreciated filmmaker received support called “an advance on receipts” from France’s committee of the National Film Centre (CNC) and was one of six screenplays to get what I imagine is some Euros (Jacques Doillon’s Aux Quatre Vents, Benoit Jacquot’s Hypnose, Philippe Faucon’s Kamikaze, L’oiseau by Yves Caumon and Juan José Lozano’s Impunité were the others).

French production house Diaphana will be producing The Monk (La Moine) and that’s about all the info we have right now. I’d like to see Laurent Lucas make it a third participation with the filmmaker who up to date only directed four films. He most recently penned for L’Autre monde for helmer Gilles Marchand.

I fondly remember Charlotte Gainsbourg playing against dinner guest Charlotte Rampling and how Laurent Lucas’ character seem to have to carry the weight of the madness. Les Inrockuptibles and Cahiers du Cinéma hated the film, but I loved Lemming (2005), which sees Lucas play Alain Getty, a brilliant young home automation engineer, and his wife Bénédicte (Gainsbourg) having recently arrived in a new town, invite Alain’s boss Richard Pollock and his wife Alice (Rampling) to dinner. The encounter does not leave the young couple’s harmony unscathed. The discovery of a mysterious rodent’s corpse blocking the waste pipe of their kitchen sink does nothing to help and portends the bursting of irrationality into what is a simple life. Here’s a refresher.