

This is a movie in which a close-up scene of something as commonplace as a woman peeling a potato implies an undercurrent of savage violation. As your inner eye imagines the paring knife scraping away skin that seems almost human, its sound scratches at your eardrum. The feeling is as exhilarating as it is slightly unnerving.

The eyes and ears of ''Humanite'' belong not only to the French director who made an auspicious debut three years ago with ''La Vie de Jesus'' (which was filmed in the same area of northern France) but to the movie's creepy but sympathetic central character, Pharaon De Winter (Emmanuel Schotte). A repressed, clumsy police detective with pasty skin, a sunken chest, protruding belly and wide frightened eyes, Pharaon lives with his stern, tight-lipped mother in a drab brick row house in a small town near the coast in Flanders. Years earlier, we learn, he lost his wife and child, but what is meant by ''lost'' is never clarified. Pharaon is also the grandson of a well-known painter of prim religious canvases whose repressed emotions contrast glaringly with the world in which Pharaon moves with such unease.

''Humanite,'' which opens a two-week engagement today at the Film Forum, begins with one of the most stunning (and shocking) sequences to be found in a recent film. As the camera surveys the naked body and genitals of an 11-year-old girl who has been raped and killed, a mysterious male figure who may or may not have committed the murder is shown in the distance running across a bluff overlooking the crime scene. The victim's face is never shown. All we see is the whitish lump of her inert flesh crawling with insects.

This unblinking portrait of death and violation exemplifies the film's almost punishing vision of the human body. Once that runner is revealed to be Pharaon, an aura of dread surrounds this man, who is so haunted by the crime he is investigating (and that he may have committed) that at one point he breaks down and lets out a desperate howl of anguish.

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The movie weaves together two narrative strands. One follows the desultory investigation supervised by the local police chief (Ghislain Ghesquiere), who dispatches Pharaon to various places to ask questions. The other tracks Pharaon's edgy relationship with Domino (Severine Caneele), a spirited young factory worker who lives two doors away from him. Pharaon pines dejectedly for this attractive young woman with a wolfish demeanor, who is carrying on an intense affair with his close friend, Joseph (Philippe Tullier), a school bus driver. The movie teases us with the possibility that the explosively vital Joseph, who is reckless behind the wheel, might also be the murderer.

Domino and Joseph's sex scenes are among the most explicit ever filmed for a nonpornographic movie. Devoid of tenderness, these rough, unpretty couplings have a brutal urgency that portrays carnal passion as a violent act, only one step removed from rape.

Throughout the film, which is set in the summer, we sense human beings as creatures in a teeming jungle. The exquisitely detailed soundtrack picks up the fluctuations of the wind, the barking of dogs and the sounds of birds and farm animals. In one remarkable tangent, the camera fixes its gaze on a litter of pigs nursing in a barn. A disturbing recurrent element is the sound of Pharaon's heavy breathing. When he goes on a solo bike ride, his panting as he climbs a hill harks back to the ominous sounds of heavy breathing in the opening scene in which the dead girl's body is discovered.

As Pharaon tags along after Domino and Joseph, we feel intimations of violence at every turn. When they are jovially badgered by a table full of drunken revelers singing lewd songs, a violent brawl seems just one beat away. During a seaside jaunt, you can almost feel the sting of the water in the wind-whipped surf in which three chubby boys frolic like porpoises and where Domino, who has removed her underwear, goes to urinate. Later on the boardwalk, a chance encounter with an acquaintance who shamelessly ogles Domino has an undercurrent of menace.

If ''Humanite's'' atmosphere of heightened consciousness approaches the surreal, the movie creates it without cinematic trickery. Instead of manipulating us with typical Hollywood ploys, the movie draws us and keeps in a state of hyper-awareness of the natural world for its 148 minutes.

All of us have had flashes in which familiar faces suddenly take on a feral aspect, and we apprehend the human condition as an animal state. In ''Humanite'' the camera periodically scours the characters' impassive faces as if to search out a bestial essence, and at these moments we do sense them as cunning, instinctual beasts peering out from their skins. During an interrogation of one suspect, Pharaon's final gesture is to bury his face in the man's neck the better to smell him.

At the same time Pharaon, Domino and Joseph are entirely recognizable as civilized, everyday people. The performances by Mr. Schotte and Ms. Caneele, who won awards for best actor and actress at the 1999 Cannes International Film Festival, are so naturalistic that the actors seem inseparable from their roles.

To sustain this vision, ''Humanite'' sacrifices most conventional plot development. The story doesn't even bother to piece together a body of evidence. When the movie reaches an abrupt, ambiguous and emotionally harrowing final scene, its failure to connect the dots beforehand is frustrating. That vagueness and ambiguity, however, seem intentional. For the final spiritual leap ''Humanite'' wants to make is to implicate every character -- all humanity, in fact -- in the tragedy.

You probably won't feel comfortable when ''Humanite'' is over, but as you leave the theater you will feel more alive than when you entered.


Written (in French, with English subtitles) and directed by Bruno Dumont; director of photography, Yves Cape; edited by Guy Lecorne; music by Richard Cuvillier; produced by Jean Brehat and Rachid Bouchareb; released by Winstar Cinema. At the Film Forum, 209 West Houston Street, South Village. Running time: 148 minutes. This film is not rated.

WITH: Emmanuel Schotte (Pharaon De Winter), Severine Caneele (Domino), Philippe Tullier (Joseph), Ghislain Ghesquiere (Commandant) and Ginette Allegre (Eliane).

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