User Reviews

The picture was a Belgian winner at Cannes as Best European Film Director's Fortnight, and I picked it up packaged as part of an 'Own the Film Movement Series'. Though there are some terrific foreign films, this one did not leave me impressed. It takes on the guise of a road film, after Yvan (Bouli Lanners) agrees to take Didier (Fabrice Adde) back to his parents' home, this after the recovering addict is found burglarizing Yvan's house. There are some unconventional characters that the pair come across along the way, but in it's attempt to be quirky, these chance encounters seem to be more contrived than accidental. The one scene that's played for poignancy involves Didier's mother, longing for some semblance of an emotional attachment to her son, but thwarted by an off screen husband who has no use for his shiftless son. Yvan conveys a rare insight into familial relationships that he imparts to his fellow traveler, while insisting they tend to an overgrown garden of weeds. This appears to be what's at the heart of the story, as Yvan despairs over the loss of his own younger brother, and now has no one left to call family. For the viewer, one is left to make what one will with the way the story ends, as there is no resolution in the traditional sense. If seen in the company of others, there will no doubt be an endless supply of possible explanations for how the story ends, or continues as it were.

A guy lives on his own in a somewhat rundown house. When he gets home one evening he finds an intruder in the house: a junkie that is trying to steal some of his belongings. After some initial anger the two of them become a very odd pair and they start making a road trip through Belgium with the two of them.

Running as a somewhat dark comedy this one is a good laugh. The pair is impossible enough to make for some very funny events and the pace of the film is high enough. Some things that happen don't make much sense at all but it never gets to the point where it becomes an irritation. With each passing mile the link between the two becomes stronger even though it is very clear that they will never be real good friends. The film is a tiny bit predictable but that doesn't work against it. It could have been stretched a bit longer though without turning less intense, which would have given some space to build on the characters a bit more.

7 out of 10 stolen moments

The main characters come together because of dogs and eventually separate because of a dog. That fact is slightly more uninteresting than most of what happens in between.

There were a few exceptions - when our two heroes first meet, when they twice receive car assistance and when they're at the parents' house. Some of the landscape shots were nice to look at too.

Character development was MINIMAL. Yvan is mild-tempered, deals in imported, used American cars and is, judging by the casual orderliness of his home and personal appearance, a bachelor and probably not dating. Elie/Didier is a junkie-liar-thief who has no money, no drugs, no car and wants to travel to his parent's home. It takes about two thirds of the movie before you discover the relationship each has with their respective families and how it might explain why Yvan befriended Elie/Didier. What is never explained is why Yvan wants to believe the best about Elie/Didier in spite of what he sees. Ultimately, there wasn't enough there for me to take an interest in either character.

This wasn't a terrible movie but once was enough. This movie is MAYBE a 5 but I think closer to a 4.

I could call the movie a disappointment except that after about 20 minutes I didn't have high hopes for it. I could see that it was following the basic arc of "Midnight Cowboy" or "Central Station": one lonely, marginalized character tries to take advantage of another, then they end up forced to depend on each other on a quixotic quest through a desolate landscape toward an illusory goal of warmth and safety. But "Midnight Cowboy" was a great film, and "Central Station" was worthwhile. There is almost nothing of lasting interest in this movie either inside or outside the two characters. (The scenes at Didier's parents' house are an exception.) There are not only one, but two conversations that are literally of the "Yes. No. Yes. No" form, which are not particularly amusing, suggesting instead that the writer had nothing much to say. The random wackiness that he occasionally attempts to pump into the action is a poor substitute because there is no follow-through. Yvan gets his hair taped to the ceiling of his car to keep himself awake, but later he crashes, without any even cursory shot to show us whether the tape gave way, his hair was pulled out, or he fell asleep still attached to that ceiling. And though the car goes off the road and drives through trees, it reveals itself as magically unharmed when a nudist appears from nowhere to tow it and give them directions, then disappears from the action. A dog is dropped from a bridge, crushing the roof of a car, but the ceiling is intact when we see it immediately thereafter.

This lack of consistency and consequence compromises the character development that is supposed to occur as well. Yvan, who is supposed to be demonstrating a growing feeling of responsibility to assuage his guilt for not being present for his family in the past, abandons his plan to take the suffering dog to a veterinarian. (Why? How expensive could it be to have a dog put to sleep by even a private vet, let alone a shelter, and has Yvan ever shied away from expense in the past?) Instead, he indulges Elie/Didier in his plan to ostensibly buy heroin to euthanize the dog, though he suspects correctly that the money will not go to that end. In the meantime, the dog whimpers, uncomforted and unseen, in the back of the car, until it finally dies. That, thankfully, is also the point at which the movie expires.