David (David Wissak) is driving across California to reach Twentynine Palms for a photography break with his girlfriend Katia (Yekaterina Golubeva), and currently they are on the highway as he takes a call from an old friend on his mobile phone and fills her on on his plans. Katia is dozing in the back of the car, but wakes up when they stop for gas, getting out to stretch her legs. Soon they are driving through the desert landscape, stopping at motels and smalltowns, and allowing their relationship to develop; yet how stable is it and will outside forces have an impact on how happy they will be together? Was this trip a big mistake after all?
The oppressive nature of an alien landscape appeared to be preying on the mind of French director Bruno Dumont for this, his third film, but you could be forgiven for missing the point as for too much of the time Twentynine Palms resembled some kind of travelogue through the lesser sites of the U.S.A.'s wilderness. This was punctuated by the couple making love either in the outdoors or in and around their motel rooms, and generating a hell of a racket when they did so: you had to feel sorry for those through the wall who were subjected to all that grunting and groaning, although the physicality of it all, sounding as if the participants were in pain, was what is known as plot foreshadowing.
That's because the film was building up to a shock ending, increasing all the tension that the holiday was creating and allowing it to boil over for a way over the top violent finale. If you were unaware that this would be how the story ended, this may have come as a surprise as for those being worn down with the deliberate boredom of the events that led up to this, they might not have noticed that they were meant to be disturbed by the matter of fact quality of the couple's journey. For most of the time we are following them as they almost aimlessly spend time together, and if we did not know they had a specific destination in mind then you possibly could not have guessed and thought they were drifters.
This is not exactly stylised, as there is a note of naturalism to it, it's simply that climax which is reminiscent of an arthouse version of one of those shock horrors which arrived in the 2000s, or more accurately one of those schlock horrors. The paranoia that these films channeled was adapted to Dumont's efforts here, although he could have done a better job of making his intentions plainer to see as all evidence points to the viewer being intended to be disturbed by the action from the start, yet this is sabotaged by the banal mood which pervades what the characters get up to. We see them sunbathing nude on a rock, milling about a swimming pool, or doing even more driving, and feel we're going nowhere in particular.
Eventually we begin to twig that this relationship might not be the perfect one that David wishes it to be, as even from the first ten minutes Katia has broken down in repressed tears, and in the last half hour they have had a blazing row, about what we're never told, and we're supposed to perceive this as the results of the surroundings wearing them down. Dumont had not picked the most picturesque locations as if to play up the bleakness of what was to come, but this was not enough in itself and many will have lost interest as this is a long two hours to spend with people who seem too wrapped up in themselves to engage with the audience. There were a few arty movies around this time which employed the would-be harrowing tactics of horror, but as with too many of them Twentynine Palms proved alienating and unilluminating.
