THIS is an astoundingly dull piece of French cinema. First time director Bruno Dumont's slab of cinema verite gives you the tedium of "real life" and little else.

Freddy, a 20 year-old who suffers bouts of epilepsy, and his mates could be any group of bored, small-town youths. Their village is empty and bland. The agricultural landscape is drab and uninspiring. None of the small group have the imagination to rise above it. They hang languidly around town, speed about the country roads on their mopeds (there are endless, painfully long shots of them riding about on their mopeds), and work on rebuilding an old car.

Into this dreary scenario Dumont splatters the odd scene of graphic nudity - and a loose thread of a plot based on violent racism toward an Arab boy in the village. The scenes of Freddy having rough sex with his girlfriend Marie, a supermarket cashier, are shot to be ugly and mechanical: her point of view shot before penetration, a prolonged shot (Dumont loves to labour his shots) of Freddie's buttocks falling and rising with piston-like regularity.

The acting elsewhere is minimal to the point of absent. The dialogue seems to have been an afterthought, again consistently hum drum. Save for some glimmers of potential from some of the part actors, this is about as exciting as watching garlic grow.