Running a dilapidated farm, the taciturn André leads a hard and lonely life, enlivened only by visits from Barbe, a neighbour's young daughter with whom he has quick couplings in a copse.

Resenting André's lack of affection, she picks up Blondel in a bar where they are drinking and has noisy sex outside in his car.

André and Blondel's platoon go on a long patrol in the bare mountains, shooting men and children and raping a woman.

The website's critical consensus reads "Though Bruno Dumont recycles his typical themes and motifs, Flanders is also just as beautifully shot and convincingly acted as the director's previous movies.

[2] Michael Phillips wrote for the Chicago Tribune "The harsh and lovely achievement of Bruno Dumont's Flanders is its mixture of the concrete and the abstract.