Patrice Leconte's Dogora : Ouvrons les yeux (2004)

During a French interview, Patrice Leconte said that the film he regrets making is Circulez, y'a rien à voir as it was one comedy too many. He likes Dogora more than any of his other films because hardly anyone has seen it. I'd not even heard of it, so set about rectifying that situation: it's available on YouTube and has been for five years, although so far the link has received less than six thousand views, and I can guess that many of those people don't hang around to watch the whole film. The reason for this is that there's no dialogue, but a large number of generally non-sequential scenes set in Cambodia only with the music of Étienne Perruchon on the soundtrack. Occasionally there are 'words' spoken as a chorus to this music, although this is in 'Dogorien', an imaginary language 'invented' by Perruchon.

Leconte's film, which is unlike anything he's ever done before, is a homage to the country and its people. It shows both urban scenes, mainly of the roads and the people and transport passing, and many scenes of the rural area, harvesting the fields, collecting the sap from trees to make rubber, etc. It is intensely poetic, and although the music blends in harmoniously with the scenes – loud and fast for busy street scenes, softer and slower for the calmer areas – I found it a little too intrusive, and I can sympathise with anyone thinking that these 'European' sounds are out of synch with what we see onscreen.