Many will cringe at the promise of the Belgian reality show Taboo: humorist Philippe Geubels spends time with four dying people and then hosts an entire audience full of terminally ill people for his stand-up comedy show – about their situation. It’s surprisingly empathetic and touching.
Cinequest hosts the North American premiere of Taboo in the television section of the fest. Taboo is likely to be one of the most controversial – and one of the most popular – entries in the festival. My complete review will appear when Taboo is released in the US.
Peter Van den Begin (right) in KING OF THE BELGIANS
In the deadpan mockumentary King of the Belgians, the King of Belgium, along with his royal handlers, is visiting Istanbul for a ribbon cutting. They are accompanied by a gonzo Brit who is a former war reporter; he’s been hired to film a puff piece documentary on the King. A constitutional crisis erupts back home and, at the same moment, a cosmic event grounds all commercial travel. The King is determined to make his way back to Belgium via ground transportation. This involves escaping Turkish security and traveling incognito through the Balkans, which creates all sorts of comic opportunities.
It’s the kind of dry comedy where a character says, “I trust fruit”. The band find themselves in Bulgarian folk singer drag, on a Balkan yogurt jury and on the run from a Serbian war criminal. We learn why it’s best not to let a King drive an ambulance. There is even a random appearance by the Bulgarian folk monsters featured in Toni Erdmann.
The King’s destiny is a life of routine, empty ceremony, and he (Peter Van den Begin) is chronically bored. When he might be really needed to unite his country, he instinctively plunges ahead to fulfill his duty, but it’s one that he and his crew of shallow shills are unequipped to handle. With very little dialogue, Van den Begin nails the role – both the dissatisfaction with his usual life and his earnest desperation to become relevant and helpful.
King of the Belgians is a gentle, thoughtful and appealing frolic.
Benoît Poelvoorde and Chiara Mastroianni in THREE HEARTS
The Belgian romantic drama Three Hearts centers on the singular character of Marc, a Parisian tax auditor who has a fondness for the ladies – and they for him. He also is very conflict-averse and handles stress very badly, which has contributed to a sometimes disabling heart condition. On a business trip to a provincial town, Marc misses his train, and becomes romantically involved with a local woman. Because of circumstance, that relationship doesn’t move forward, which clears him to begin a relationship with a second woman in that town. Once he is irrevocably entangled, he learns that the two women are intimates.
In what I think is a really compelling performance, Marc is played by Benoît Poelvoorde. Marc finds himself trapped in an excruciating situation, and the only way out requires courage that he just doesn’t have. Poelvoorde is completely believable as a guy who chats up women, settles into domesticity and then is paralyzed by terror and dread. Plus, Poelvoorde has a gangly walk and often slips into outright goofiness, which effectively lightens the dramatic tension.
Now, some critics do not agree with me. Poelvoorde is not a conventionally good-looking guy. Ordinarily, you wouldn’t expect a guy like this to be able to attract a woman who looks like Chiara Mastroianni or Charlotte Gainsbourg. If you can’t jump this, you’re not gonna buy into the movie, but it worked for me. Marc does seem to one of those rugged guys who has a knack with the ladies, and the two woman characters are in windows of extreme vulnerability and are ripe to experiment outside their own relationships.
Charlotte Gainsbourg and Chiara Mastroianni are excellent as the two women. Their personalities are starkly different but they each have an immediate need that they hope Marc can fill. With the regal serenity that she can muster, Catherine Deneuve plays the character who intuits what is going on long before the others.
Three Hearts is directed and co-written by Benoit Jaquot, who recently gave us the lavishly staged and absorbing costume drama Farewell, My Queen.
One more thing – the potential for upcoming confrontation is signaled by Big Music – ominous cello notes that sound like the theme from Jaws played backwards. I saw this as wry self-mocking of the drama, and I found this device to be amusing. It’s just a little part of the movie, but people that I saw Three Hearts with found it to be off-putting.
The bottom line is that Three Hearts worked for me, and I recommend it with the caveat that some willing suspension of disbelief is required.
In the Belgian drama Two Days, One Night, a factory worker (Oscar winner Marion Cotillard) finds out on Friday afternoon that she will be laid off unless she can convince nine of her sixteen co-workers to sacrifice their bonuses. She must make her case to each of them before a vote on Monday morning. It’s a substantial bonus, and every one of her colleagues really needs it; their spouses are expecting it, too, and many have decided how they are going to spend it. The vote is going to be close, the stakes for each family is high and the tension builds.
Our protagonist is anything but plucky. She needs to be coaxed and prodded by her husband and a militant co-worker. She is buoyed enough by an early victory to keep going, but she’s constantly on the verge of giving up.
She hasn’t been been well, which also complicates things. Because the filmmakers wait until midway to explicitly reveal her illness, I’m being careful not to spoil it here. But the precise illness is important because it affects both her own stamina and the confidence of her co-workers about how well she would contribute to the workplace.
Two Days, One Night is the latest from two of my favorites writer-director filmmakers, the brothers Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardennes. They specialize in contemporary dramas of the Belgian working class. Their The Kid with a Bike was #1 on my Best Movies of 2012. And I think that their 2002 The Son (Le Fils) was pretty much a masterpiece, too. The Dardennes’ hand held (but NOT shaky) cameras intrude right on top of the characters, bringing an urgency and immediacy to every scene. Hyper realism contributes to the verisimilitude and thereby builds more power into the stories; here, a tense conversation in the doorway to an apartment building get interrupted by someone walking in – just as it would be in real life.
At its core, Two Days, One Night explores the limits of emotional endurance. What does she need to rebound form her malaise – the adrelin surge of battle? Or the power from getting to make her own choice?
[Anyone who has visited France or Belgium will recognize the remarkable politeness of the characters – observing all the formalities of greeting, shaking hands and saying thanks and goodbye even in the most awkward and emotionally charged encounters.]
Two Days, One Night is a fine film, just outside the Top Ten on my Best Movies of 2014. Unsurprisingly, Cotillard’s glammed-down performance is brilliant. It’s a compelling story as we walk her tightrope of desperation, heading toward redemption. Two Days, One Night opens widely in the San Francisco Bay Area tomorrow.
One of the absolute gems in the Bay Area’s cinema scene is the San Francisco Film Society’s French Cinema Now series. Every year at French Cinema Now, SFFS presents the best and most interesting movies contemporary French movies.
This year’s offerings include early looks at two Big Movies – as in potential Oscar bait or, at least, art house hits.
Two Days, One Night: The latest urgent drama from the Dardennes brothers (The Kid with a Bike, The Son). Their movies always make my annual top ten list – and this one features Marion Cotillard.
Clouds of Sils Maria: Juliette Binoche and Kristen Stewart in an All About Eve-type rivalry, directed by Olivier Assayas (Carlos). Stewart has gotten great reviews.
Other tempting treats include:
Paris Follies: the always compelling actors Isabelle Huppert and Jean-Pierre Darroussin as old marrieds.
Love Is the Perfect Crime: a great cast (Mathieu Amalric, Karen Viard, Maïwenn, Sara Forestier) in a sly story of crime and sex.
In I’m the Same, I’m Another, a man in his 30s is on the run with a 10-year-old girl. Writer-director Caroline Strubbe challenges the audience to figure out why and from whom and to what end they are running – and even what is the relationship between the man and the girl. Although I’m the Same, I’m Another is a Belgian film, the two Dutch-speaking characters primarily speak in English.
We worry about the welfare of the child, so there is a consistent tension over the film’s 110 minutes. At the end, we learn the general category of the relationship between the man and the girl and the trajectory of what will happen to each of them, but not much more.
I generally like movies that require the audience to meet the story halfway instead of having the story all wrapped and dropped on your porch like a UPS parcel. And I’m definitely OK with an ambiguous ending. But I’m the Same requires a helluva investment from the audience – two hours with not much action and plenty of anxiety. Ultimately, I didn’t think that the payoff was worth the two hours of angst.
SPOILER ALERT: What I’m the Same does especially well is the portrait of the girl who has been traumatized by a sudden loss. Although she is not overtly abused by the man, and although he provides her with basic needs, and although her need for attachment draws her to bond with him, it’s clear that he is not going to be able o address her emotional damage in the long run. Because they hide out in an industrial outpost on the northern British coast, both their impoverished and furtive circumstance and the dreary setting contribute to a pretty grim cinematic experience.
The Belgian drama The Verdict (Het Vonnis) won Best Director at the Montreal Film Festival. A man’s family is destroyed by an especially senseless and brutal crime, and the monstrous perp is freed by an infuriatingly absurd legal technicality. When he takes vigilante revenge, he is tried for the crime. Any American jury would free this guy in about eleven seconds, but this is Belgium and the dead perp’s lawyer is passionate about the rule of law, and the cynical prosecutors need to convict the guy to cover up their own incompetence. So we have a courtroom drama. The Verdict advocates the political position that the Belgian justice system protects the rights of criminal defendants at the expense of victims – kind of like Dirty Harry (only in Dutch).
As well-crafted as is The Verdict, I think that it will be difficult for American audiences to relate to the political morality play; The Verdict is more accessible as a psychological drama – the portrait of a man who has nothing left to lose, but still grasps for a glimmer of justice.
The Kid with a Bike is an extraordinary film that tells a riveting story of unconditional love. It is emotionally powerful without being sentimental and is gripping without stunts and explosions. The Kid with a Bike topped my list of Best Movies of 2012. It’s out today on DVD – available from by Criterion Collection, no less.
A 12-year-old boy wants to find the father who dumped him at a children’s home, but meets a woman who becomes his de facto foster mom. In the face of overwhelming evidence, the boy refuses to acknowledge the possibility that his father doesn’t want him. He becomes angry, acts out and is poised to make life-ruining choices. His one chance in life is the woman who is drawn to caring for him, but he could alienate her, too.
The writer-directors, the Belgian brothers Luc and Jean-Pierre Dardennes, are two of my favorite film makers (The Son, Rosetta). Their gift is minimalistic filmmaking that addresses fundamental themes like love, loss, forgiveness and belonging. To avoid sappiness, they set their stories in gritty industrial towns and employ vividly realistic characters. As all their work, The Kid with a Bike is an unvarnished and utterly realistic looking film. This helps them create a fable about absolute goodness and the saving of another human being and present it in a credible, unsentimental and immediate package.
The Dardennes are known for their success with untrained actors, and here Thomas Doret is excellent as the kid – energetic, longing and single-minded. The Belgian-born French star Cecille De France (Hereafter, The Spanish Apartment) is wonderful as the foster mom – steadfast but unknowable. The compelling actor Olivier Gourmet (The Son, Rosetta, Mesrine) briefly appears in a bit part.
In the Belgian comedy Mobile Home, two underachievers in their late 20s, decide to move away from their parents. They move into a Fiat version of a Winnebago so they can tour the world. But their big move isn’t really that independent because they park the new home on wheels within an easy drive of their parents. The question in Mobile Home is whether either of them will catch even a whiff of adult responsibility or whether they will continue denying that it is time to get a real job.
This Belgian story is smarter than most Hollywood bromances, but nothing we haven’t seen before. A nice little festival film.
I saw Mobile Home at the San Francisco Film Society’s French Cinema Now series. The trailer is in French without subtitles.
The Kid with a Bike is an extraordinary film that tells a riveting story of unconditional love. It is emotionally powerful without being sentimental and is gripping without stunts and explosions.
A 12-year-old boy wants to find the father who dumped him at a children’s home, but meets a woman who becomes his de facto foster mom. In the face of overwhelming evidence, the boy refuses to acknowledge the possibility that his father doesn’t want him. He becomes angry, acts out and is poised to make life-ruining choices. His one chance in life is the woman who is drawn to caring for him, but he could alienate her, too.
The writer-directors, the Belgian brothers Luc and Jean-Pierre Dardennes, are two of my favorite film makers (The Son, Rosetta). Their gift is minimalistic filmmaking that addresses fundamental themes like love, loss, forgiveness and belonging. To avoid sappiness, they set their stories in gritty industrial towns and employ vividly realistic characters. As all their work, The Kid with a Bike is an unvarnished and utterly realistic looking film. This helps them create a fable about absolute goodness and the saving of another human being and present it in a credible, unsentimental and immediate package.
The Dardennes are known for their success with untrained actors, and here Thomas Doret is excellent as the kid – energetic, longing and single-minded. The Belgian-born French star Cecille De France (Hereafter, The Spanish Apartment) is wonderful as the foster mom – steadfast but unknowable. The compelling actor Olivier Gourmet (The Son, Rosetta, Mesrine) briefly appears in a bit part.
