Anamaria Vartolomei as Jane in Bruno Dumont’s Berlinale competitor “L’Empire”

The highly anticipated space sci-fi offering “L’Empire” from Bruno Dumont, one of the leading lights of French intellectual cinema, failed to achieve warp speed at the Berlinale, where it had its premiere on Sunday and is in contention for the festival’s main Golden Bear prize.

Dumont, the maker of art-house fare like “Jeannette: The Childhood of Joan of Arc” and “Camille Claudel, 1915”, has tried his hand in recent years at more mainstream comedy or satire, such as “France” starring Lea Seydoux as a self-regarding news broadcaster who ensures that in all her stories from war zones, the focus is on her.

For “L’Empire”, Dumont has returned to France’s northern Opal Coast, where he filmed a brilliant satire of rural life, “L’il Quinquin”, in 2015. He again employs a mix of professional actors and local residents to depict a galactic battle between the “1’s”, who want to rid humanity of evil, and the “0’s”, who want to bring out all the worst in the human species. The battle is played out partly on earth, partly in space, but mostly in ways that are not nearly as funny, clever or profound as Dumont, who also takes the screenwriting credit, may have thought they were.

Since much of the film is based in the French countryside, the bad guys ride around on horses, but the horses are white. Anamaria Vartolomei plays Jane, a terrestrial leader of the good guys, who in an extended sequence tries to teach her sidekick Rudy (Julien Manier) how to use a light sabre, but neither is very good at it. Shoulda called Yoda.

Designing the two warring sides’ space battle cruisers to look like the Sainte-Chapelle in Paris, for the good guys, and the Caserta palace in Italy for the “O’s”, elicits a chuckle. And casting the veteran French actor Fabrice Luchini as the campy emperor of the baddies, who is entertained in his palace by a black-clad dancer who gyrates to jazzed-up Bach, is a brilliant touch. There’s more to it, including a baby both sides are warring over, and some decent special effects, but these do not a great movie make.

Dumont, at a festival press conference, said he was attracted to science fiction because it’s “a complex and entertaining way to address issues”. He said that “L’Empire” is not a parody of “Star Wars” but does reference those films, as well as the Planet of the Apes series and Stanley Kubrick’s “2001: A Space Odyssey”. And indeed, once Dumont has said that, the inspirations become clearer.

He said categorically, though, that the film was not intended to follow in the footsteps of Mel Brooks’s brilliant 1987 “Spaceballs”, an out-and-out parody of the original “Star Wars” films and of the sci-fi genre more broadly. More’s the pity, since “Spaceballs” gave the world the expression “ludicrous speed”, which inspired Elon Musk to tout a ludicrous mode for his fastest model Tesla.

Dumont’s “L’Empire” won’t be leaving an imprint on the culture anywhere near as deep or lasting as “Star Wars”, or even “Spaceballs”.

By Michael Roddy