Bullhead (Saturday, February 18, 2012) (13)

I'm not really convinced that the story told in Michael Roskam's film Bullhead is at all scientifically possible, but it's a pretty enjoyable one, if a bit silly. The film opens with Jacky (Matthias Schoenaerts), an absolute hulk of a Belgian man, posing naked in the mirror after a shower. He has muscles everywhere. He then goes to a mini-fridge and gets vials of some drug and takes out a syringe. We then jump to an exchange between a group of Flemish cattlemen talking about how the cops are arresting some of their brethren who use hormones to increase the size of their cows.

We then see a flashback to how when Jacky was a kid his father bought growth hormone for his cattle. One day, the daughter of the hormone dealer caught Jacky's eye and before he could make a move on her, her brother, chased Jacky away and ended up effectively castrating him with rocks (ouch!). It seems that from that point on, Jacky was injected with growth hormone (human, we have to assume, rather than bovine) until he got to be the enormous size he is in the present.

Now, years later, the girl who once interested Jacky as a kid is his main fascination. He begins to stalk her (somehow she doesn't know who he is) and as the cops begin to figure out that he's involved in a massive cow doping cartel, the woman finds out who he is as well.

One interesting aspect to the story is that the setting is some place right on the Flemish and Wallonian border and we see clearly that the two peoples hate each other. Only a few of the Flemish speak French and only a few of the Walloons speak Flemish (Jacky is Flemish and his lady obsession is Walloon). I feel like we don't see this schism in film very frequently and it's interesting. Both parts make the whole, but they don't trust and resent each other. This brings up a clever link between the split duality of Belgium and, of course, the duality of testicles (ooof - that's a bit silly, isn't it?).

There is a great Belgian look to the film that I love. It has the stark reality of blues, grays and browns that have become synonymous with other Belgian filmmakers, like the Dardenne brothers, or the blessed Chantal Akerman. I guess it's this natural quality that is most compelling about the film, but also it's biggest problem.

In the end, the film is a rather over-the-top light action flick, certainly with more ennui and more pathos. Many details of the story fall apart because they seem like deus-ex-machina devices rather than plausible elements (such as how Jacky's childhood bully is now in a hospital mostly paralyzed and unable to speak due to an accident or how the grown woman doesn't know who Jacky is). The story begins to fray at the edges with all these silly parts.

I like this film, but I admit it has some problems. It's a pretty good story and the idea of a man-giant being ball-less and miserable because he's less of a man is interesting. Perhaps the bovine and human hormone link is too neat and tidy for me. Still, it's well made and has some compelling moments.

Stars: 3 of 4

The Kid with a Bike (Thursday, October 6, 2011) (86)

Jean Pierre and Luc Dardenne are together one of the most interesting writing/directing forces of recent years. Their neo-neorealist style is shown beautifully in this film, an examination of a fairy tale... but again from their neo-neorealist style. Cryil (Thomas Doret) is an abandoned kid who has one love in the world, the bike his father gave him before giving him to the orphanage in the small Belgian town where the story takes place. He is found by Samantha (Cecile de France) who takes him in on weekends as long as he behaves himself. She is his belle, and he is, effectively her knight in shining armor. Things go slightly pear-shaped when his is rejected once and for all by his father, Guy (Jeremie Renier). There is an inherent self-referential quality to the tale, of course, in that Renier is effectively rejecting the kid he was in the Dardenne's La Promesse (1996), Bruno, making this film as much an analysis of their oeuvre as it is a story in its own right. I love that the Dardennes dare to make a fairy tale in their realistic style and, of course, they succeed brilliantly. It's still a slightly small movie and doesn't pack the wallop of La Promesse or The Son (perhaps because it's ever so slightly more complicated than those masterpieces). Still, this is wonderful and and fun to be inside their world for 87 minutes.

Stars: 3.5 of 4

Illegal (Sunday, May 29, 2011) (38)

One thing Euro filmmakers (an almost totally Left or ultra-Left cadre) love are stories about the dignity of illegal immigrants. Recently, there has been Lorna's Silence by the Dardennes and Welcome, by Philippe Lioret (just to name two) (and not to say anything of the Dardennes masterful La Promesse from 1996). One big hit at the recent Cannes festival was Le Havre, another story in the same vein. Most of these movies are character-driven and move along on the energy of our communal outrage at the stubborn governments who won't let these honest, good people live and work in peace. As an ultra-liberal myself who doesn't have a big problem with illegal immigration, I generally find these stories a bit shallow and mostly uninteresting in style and substance (with the obvious exception of the Dardennes who can't help but shit gold when they shit).

Illegal, by Olivier Masset-Depasse, is yet another Belgian/French film about a well-meaning illegal immigrant mother being torn apart from her young son and her dreams by a heartless immigration system. In it, Tania (Anne Coesens) is a middle-aged woman from Russia who moves to Brussels for some job opportunities as an industrial building janitor. The films opens with her finding out her immigration paperwork won't come through and her responding by burning off her fingerprints with a hot iron.

A few years later, her son is in elementary school and totally socialized into Belgian society. She insists they speak in French on the bus and not Russian (so as not to tip off the Belgian authorities, who are apparently suspicious of all Russian speakers... because Belgium is a police-state, dontcha know). One day, the says something to his mom in Russian and the authorities are right there to demand her papers. When she can't produce them, she's arrested and gets stuck in a Kafkaesque tale of bad decisions on her part and ruthless regulations from the government. At some point she's shockingly beaten and there's a suggestion that the Belgian immigration services rapes some female detainees (not Tania, but some of her friends).

This is all a very black-and-white sorta story. Tania is good and the government is bad. Her decisions, sometimes rashly made, are never seen as anything but understandable and good. The State and its various police forces are seen as blind and hapless, with a few silly keystone-copsy moments of extreme foolishness (apparently cops who are moving prisoners are easily fooled by cunning immigrant women). It's all very tiresome.

Throughout the film we are led away from the obvious fact that Tania is in Belgium illegally (her son is illegal too, by the way) and really shouldn't be there. We never see why she should be allowed to get a pass from the law - it's just assumed that because she's the main character and we like her she should be able to stay. I'm not saying her cause is pointless, but why should I be forced to root against the government who is simply doing what it's supposed to be doing? Wouldn't a government with immigration laws it didn't enforce be a lame bad guy?

And I guess that's exactly the problem with the film. This shouldn't be a good-guy/bad-guy story. This should be a character study of this woman who makes quick decisions in panic that turn her case into a nightmare situation. There's no need for such government bashing. It just strikes me as easy and lazy on a script/concept level and banal as a final product.

Stars: 2 of 4

A Town Called Panic (Saturday, December 19, 2009) (196)

What's more snobby in the world of animation than claymation? French claymation, of course - and with subtitles! Actually, this is a cute, film along the lines of a gonzo SpongeBob SquarePants about a small village where toy humans and toy animals live and get into all sorts of hijinks.

For Horse's birthday, his roommates Cowboy and Indian (you see, in French, you can say things like 'Indian' and just be cute and foreign and not culturally insensitive! Bonus!) decide to build him a barbecue pit. They order bricks online, but when the delivery arrives, they realize they have way too many. They stack the thousands of bricks on top of the house, leading, of course, to a gigantic mess when the roof collapses and bricks go everywhere. This is just the opening to a bunch of wild and crazy things that ensue.

The style throughout it playful and funny. The characters move like toys rather than articulated characters typical in most animated films (like the Fantastic Mr. Fox), and the high-pitched voices are hilarious, even if you don't understand the French. We never know what to expect around the next corner - and directors Vincent Patar and Stephane Aubier do a clever job throwing a few curve-balls at us.

The biggest problem with the film is that it's not totally a single storyline throughout. It is adapted from a television show where the scenes are each about five-minutes long. As a result, it's feels like a soup in a can, rather than something totally homemade. That is, the story goes in such bizarre directions (funny but weird) that it is easy to lose track of the thread and get a bit bored. I am not sure if the script was written as one story arc, or if this is just an amalgamation of a bunch of shorts (I could see it either way). In the end it feels like something that would work better as a bunch of shorts - even a few 15-minute shorts, rather than a feature. Still, it's silly and fun all around.

Stars: 2 of 4