THIS film is about feelings rather than events. Its pace is SLOW.

Pharaoh de Winter is ill at ease with his world. His wife and child died two years ago and he is plodding along as a police inspector in a small provincial town in France, when the body of an 11-year-old rape victim is discovered.

The murder investigation is the frame through which we observe Pharaoh. He lives with his mother and his best friends are the couple next door whose sexuality disturbs him. The husband teases Pharaoh about his lack of girlfriends and the wife flirts with him. Neither of these pleases Pharaoh, but being his only friends, when not working, or in his allotment, he is usually with them.

The murder investigation is only ever a device to portray characters. When the child rapist is found we have no idea how. I kept having to retune myself to the pace and lack of action during most of the film.

This is director Bruno Dumonts' second feature film, coming two years after "The Life of Jesus" which was about a small town with nothing for youth to do. In "Humanity" the main protagonist lives a numb and occasionally compassionate life, with no evolution.