belgium

Le Silence de Lorna (2008, Directors: Jean Pierre Dardenne and Luc Dardenne): Sadly, once again I come to the work of acclaimed filmmakers with no previous experience of their work. The Dardenne brothers have been mining their own seam for many years now, exploring the lives of the poor, unglamorous and desperate in unfussy realistic films. Their latest provoked polarizing reactions at Cannes this year, where some found it stylistically too similar to their previous work, or thematically too much like other films about the intersections of the old and new Europe. Luckily, I wasn’t carrying that baggage.

Lorna (Arta Dobroshi) is a young Albanian woman living in Belgium whose dream is to one day open a snack bar with her boyfriend Sokol. In order to be eligible for bank loans and other benefits, she enters a marriage of convenience with a heroin addict to gain her citizenship. We quickly learn, however, that this is only a small part of a larger, darker scheme masterminded by a local small-time hood named Fabio. Both Lorna and her husband Claudy (Jeremie Renier, a stalwart of the Dardennes’ recent films) have been paid, with the understanding that Lorna will divorce Claudy as soon as she gains her citizenship so she can remarry a wealthy Russian, allowing him to obtain citizenship as well. At least that’s what Claudy thinks. But Fabio’s plan is to stage Claudy’s death from a heroin overdose instead. Will Lorna go along with this deception? At the beginning it appears that she will. She and Claudy live under the same roof, but keep separate rooms and there is little in the way of sympathy. But when he decides that he wants to kick his habit and begins begging her for help, Lorna’s attitude slowly begins to change. After a successful hospital stay, he is released and his relationship with Lorna seems to enter previously unknown territory. The plan is in jeopardy because people who started off using each other start to feel connected. Fabio, meanwhile, is desperate to complete the deal with the Russian at all costs.

Dobroshi is in almost every frame of this film and she is wonderful, showing a single-minded stoicism punctuated with some unexpected outbursts of emotion. Remarkably, despite the dehumanizing aspects of the scheme, it’s one Lorna entered into willingly, and at no point is there any sexual exploitation. In fact, when sex does enter the picture, it’s as an expression of rebellion and of passion, and it throws the whole greed-fuelled plan into disarray. She soon comes to realize her powerlessness and expendability and by the end of the film, her dreams have been replaced with a desperate desire simply to survive. Along the way, though, this solitary and determined figure becomes more alive and less alone, even as her carefully-ordered life loses all of its stability. If this is minor Dardennes, I can’t wait to catch up on the major stuff.

Trailer

(9/10)

I’d read about director Martin McDonagh’s upcoming feature In Bruges a few weeks ago, and was intrigued by the setting (I’ve spend long stretches here on both my backpacking trips around Europe in the late 1980s) and the casting (Colin Farrell, Brendan Gleeson, Ralph Fiennes). Now the trailer is up and I’m convinced this will be a winner.

I’ve never been much of a Colin Farrell fan, but here he gets to play a Dublin hitman sent to a Belgian tourist town after a botched hit. The accents and dialogue are spot-on and the humour in the trailer promises to make this a unique spin on the hitman genre.

By the way, the trailer is hosted on Film in Focus, a new advertorial site from Focus Features that actually features a lot of great content.

In Bruges Trailer

P.S. Martin McDonagh is actually much better-known as a playwright, and I remember seeing his play The Lonesome West back in 2002 and having a very mixed reaction to it.

P.P.S. Watching this trailer brought back memories of another great Irish mob film with Brendan Gleeson called I Went Down. Inexplicably, it’s not available on DVD. It was briefly released in Region 4 (Australia) but is now out of print. Considering that this was the highest-grossing Irish film at the time of its release (1997), its unavailability seems criminal, if you’ll pardon the expression.

UPDATE (January 4, 2008): I’ve just learned that the film will be the Opening Night presentation at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, so we shouldn’t have to wait too long to hear what the reviewers there thought of it.

The Danish Poet

Tonight’s programme consisted of award-winning shorts released in 2006, and just watching them one after another led me to a few conclusions about short films in general. To compare them to written works, they’re a bit like poems to a feature film’s novel. And to compare to spoken word, they’re like jokes as opposed to sagas. With such a short amount of time, they need to make their points quickly, so there is often a high “cleverness” factor and the endings often feel like the punch line of a joke. This can work well, but a film that stands out is one that doesn’t make these tropes so obvious. Here, in my order of enjoyment, are tonight’s selections:

• The Danish Poet (Canada/Norway, 2006): With lovely narration from Liv Ullmann, this story felt the most organic and the least gimmicky. Even though there is a sort of punchline “payoff” at the end, it’s telegraphed early enough to set us down gently. The whimsical animation style and always-great use of animated (but non-speaking) animals made this a worthy Oscar-winner this year. Check out the film’s web site. (9/10)
• Dreams and Desires - Family Ties (UK, 2006): Another animated short, this one cleverly used animated sketches to simulate a wedding video filmed by the oddly cinephilic Beryl, a large woman of grandmotherly vintage. Her attempts to film the disastrous occasion in the styles of famous directors from Eistenstein to Riefenstahl, all the while keeping up a steady stream-of-consciousness narration, keeps this one rollicking along, despite the nearly impenetrable accents. (9/10)
• Tanghi Argentini (Belgium, 2006): This is a charming tale of an office drone who just might be an angel. André needs to learn to tango in two weeks so he can meet his Internet crush, so he turns to his colleague Frans to help teach him to dance. Will love bloom? (8/10)
• Contact (Raak) (Netherlands, 2006): Three characters paths cross again and again in this cleverly-edited short. There’s that word “clever” again. (7/10)
• The Substitute (Il Supplente) (Italy, 2006): A class of high-school students is terrorized by a Scott Thompson (ex-Kids in the Hall) lookalike, who then gets his comeuppance. Funny in an odd sort of way. (7/10)
• Make A Wish (Atmenah) (USA, 2006): A straightforward, almost documentary-like tale of a young girl who will go to any lengths to get a special birthday cake. Only it’s set in the West Bank. The filmmaking is pretty rudimentary and there’s a bit of a (tragic) punchline at the end. (6/10)
• Imagine This (Australia/Ireland, 2006): Sometimes a short should also be a “small.” Using found internet footage to make George W. Bush “sing” John Lennon’s “Imagine” was a pretty funny idea. But it really shouldn’t have made it off the YouTube site. (5/10)

The Alzheimer Case (De Zaak Alzheimer) (Belgium, director Erik Van Looy): Although based on a novel, this stylish police thriller’s main conceit (”hitman has Alzheimer’s”) could have been lifted from a Hollywood film executive’s idea of “high concept”. Except that it would have made a forgettable Hollywood picture. Instead, director Van Looy sets this story in his native Belgium. Police detectives Vincke and Verstuyft are like a modern day Starsky and Hutch, without the bad haircuts. Who knew that Antwerp even had police, never mind such cool ones? Their job is to track down the man who’s killed several high-profile politicians and a young child prostitute.

Reminding me a lot of Terence Stamp in The Limey, veteran actor Jan Decleir portrays aging hitman Angelo Ledda, whose refusal to kill the young girl leads him to seek revenge on the people who want her dead. His deterioration is a cause for sympathy as well as a plot device. He must complete his “mission” before he forgets his reasons for carrying it out. He also plays a cat and mouse game with the police who are trying to solve the killings, staying one step ahead until he can no longer think clearly.

Van Looy admitted his fondness for “police thrillers with a soul” and especially for the work of Michael Mann, and the influence of Mann is everywhere. If you like Mann, you’ll like this film. Well-developed characters, moody cinematography and fine acting didn’t completely save this film, though. I thought the plot was a little too straightforward, and the film itself was about 20 minutes too long, with a couple of false endings that could have been re-cut. I think I would have given a shorter version of this film an 8, but even if it was a slightly derivative cop film, it was a slightly derivative cop film in Flemish!

Film’s Web Site: ms.skynet.be/alzheimer

(7/10)