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.
The Belgian writer-director brothers Luc and Jean-Pierre Dardennes are among my very favorite filmmakers. Their movies about everyday people in gritty industrial Belgium have been startlingly authentic and emotionally gripping. However, their latest, The Unknown Girl, is a bit of a slog.
In The Unknown Girl, a compassionate and hardworking doctor (Adèle Haenel) is working late and doesn’t answer the office doorbell after hours. It turns out that a young woman had been trying to get inside just before she was murdered. The cops can’t even identify the victim. The doc is wracked with guilt and embarks on a quest to identify the young woman and to solve the crime.
So this is a murder mystery – the closest thing ever to a Dardennes brothers genre movie. Unfortunately the deliberate, real-time pace that intensifies the emotional experience of the Dardennes’ other work just drags in The Unknown Girl. And there are just one or two coincidences in the plot to swallow.
Adèle Haenel (recently so good in In the Name of My Daughter) is excellent and the best thing about the film. She’s in every scene and portrays a driven and remarkably self-aware character, who often intentionally suppresses her emotions to do the best job possible for her patients.
This isn’t a bad movie, just not a spectacularly good one. By all means, see a Dardennes film, just make it The Son or The Kid with a Bike.
