Almayer's Folly (Chantal Akerman, 2011)

Almayer's Folly, directed by the late Belgian filmmaker Chantal Akerman and first released in 2011, is a highly atmospheric and contemplative film that examines, inter alia, the impact of colonialism.  Adapted from Joseph Conrad's eponymous debut novel, the film was Akerman's final narrative feature before her untimely death in 2015; during her lengthy career, Akerman made just one other literary adaptation, 2000's austere The Captive, which was loosely based on Marcel Proust's La Prisonnière.  Akerman took a similarly liberal approach when it came to translating Conrad to the screen, although Francis Ford Coppola's much-discussed Apocalypse Now remains an even more outré stab at the author's work.

Just as Coppola transposed Conrad's Heart of Darkness from the 19th-century Belgian Congo to 20th-century Vietnam, Akerman updates the author's 1895 novel to the 1950s.  Although shot in Cambodia, Akerman's film is set in Malaysia, where it follows the story of Dutch trader Almayer (Stanislas Merhar) and his mixed-race daughter Nina (Aurora Marion).  Almayer, trapped in a loveless marriage to local woman Zahira (Sakhna Oum), is clinging to fading hopes of finding gold deposits in the land that surrounds his riverside home (this building, as explained in the book, is the "folly" of the title).  Moreover, Zahira's adoptive father Lingard (Marc Barbé) is busy burning through the wealth earmarked for Almayer.

With all else failing, Almayer focuses on securing his daughter's future.  After some vague talk of a trip involving visits to Paris and London, Nina is packed off to a colonial boarding school, where it is hoped she will become more in tune with her European heritage; her absence only compounds Almayer's misery.  Merhar, who also starred in the aforementioned The Captive, delivers a well-judged performance as Almayer, capturing the title character's slide into madness as he struggles with both his flailing business and the painful separation from his cherished daughter; Belgian actress Marion brings a beguiling intensity to her role, perfectly embodying the dichotomy of a girl caught between two hugely contrasting worlds.

Almayer's Folly requires patience, and it takes some time for its brilliance to emerge; this demanding film is both elliptical and highly reflective of its director's formally rigorous methods.  Yet it is not inapt to suggest that Almayer's Folly would form a fine double bill with Apocalypse Now—whose redux version features Akerman favourite Aurore Clément—with Akerman's ice providing a counterpoint to Coppola's fire.  Conrad, whose works often hinge on what is left unsaid, proves an ideal fit for Chantal Akerman, with the economy of his storytelling neatly dovetailing with her languid, minimalist approach.  This late masterpiece from Akerman is an exemplary meditation on the death rattle of colonialism.

Darren Arnold

Images: BFI

The Captive (Chantal Akerman, 2000)

First released in 2000, Chantal Akerman's The Captive is an updating of Marcel Proust's The Prisoner, the fifth volume of his epic novel In Search of Lost Time.  This striking, formally rigorous film reframes Proust's study of obsessive control to great effect; perhaps surprisingly, Akerman made just one other literary adaptation, her eponymous 2010 film of Joseph Conrad's debut novel Almayer's Folly.  The Captive is one of four of the late Belgian director's features—the others being Golden Eighties, Tomorrow We Move and De Afspraken van Anna—that have recently been restored in 4K by the Royal Film Archive of Belgium.

The Captive follows Simon (Stanislas Merhar), a rich idler who becomes increasingly obsessed with his girlfriend Ariane (Sylvie Testud).  Simon dictates and monitors every aspect of Ariane's life, and is particularly interested in her friend Andrée (Olivia Bonamy), with whom he suspects she is having an affair; Ariane, for her part, is compliant yet inscrutable.  The long takes and attenuated pacing allow the audience to fully immerse themselves in the characters' fractured psychology, while the immaculate cinematography, by the Léopoldville-born Sabine Lancelin, lends an icy claustrophobia to the proceedings.

Merhar, who later played the title role in the beguiling Almayer's Folly, delivers a fine performance as Simon, deftly capturing the character's vanity and neuroses as he attempts to tighten his grip on Ariane.  Testud, who would also go on to reteam with Akerman (on Tomorrow We Move), is equally impressive, with her Ariane embodying an opaqueness that keeps her a mystery to Simon and the audience alike.  As the film presents the fraught dynamic between the ethereal Ariane and the controlling Simon, Akerman explores wildly contrasting ideas of love and the blurred lines that sit between devotion and possession.

It may well be that Ariane is as unknowable to Simon as Proust is to the non-francophone; it's been posited that English translations of In Search of Lost Time—of which there have been several—largely fail to illuminate the text.  There is also the challenge of another kind of translation: that of adapting Proust, who was openly dismissive of cinema, for the screen.  Prior to The Captive, filmmakers Volker Schlöndorff (Swann in Love) and Raúl Ruiz (Time Regained) grappled gamely with other volumes from the same novel, but it is perhaps Chantal Akerman's haunting effort that best captures the essence of Proust's magnum opus.

Darren Arnold

Image: BFI

South (Chantal Akerman, 1999)

Belgian filmmaker Chantal Akerman's documentary South, which premiered in 1999, centres on racial violence in the southern US.  The film examines the terrible aftermath of the brutal and senseless killing of James Byrd Jr., an African-American man who was murdered by a trio of white supremacists in Jasper, Texas, in 1998.  In South's early stages, Akerman's approach is near-Lynchian in its depiction of the horrors that lurk beneath the surface: the film opens with a series of tranquil and prosaic shots of Jasper, capturing quotidian life in the Deep South; however, as the narrative unspools, these images take on a different hue, reflecting the underlying racial tensions and historical weight of the region.

One of the film's most striking features is its use of long, static shots; Akerman largely allows the visuals to speak for themselves, creating a palpable sense of stillness.  The juxtaposition of the placid scenery with the horrific details of Byrd's death—he was dragged behind a truck for three miles, and his remains were recovered from 81 places—creates a queasy contrast that underlines the viciousness of the crime.  The film includes a number of interviews with local residents, police officials, and members of the wider African-American community, providing a varied perspective on the legacy of the murder.  While insightful, these sequences are eclipsed by poignant footage of Byrd's memorial service.

But South is not just about James Byrd's lynching: it is a broader statement on the embedded nature of racism, and the film's meditative tone invites the audience to consider hate crimes and their lasting impact on individuals, communities and society.  While South may be challenging for some viewers due to its deliberate pacing—despite being a mere 71 minutes long—and difficult subject matter, it is a profoundly moving and important work that grapples with a shameful episode in recent history.  Akerman's sensitive direction and the evocative imagery—the protracted final shot, as seen in the clip below, is gasp-inducing—make South a haunting and harrowing experience, one that lingers in the mind for days.

Darren Arnold

Images: BFI

Golden Eighties (Chantal Akerman, 1986)

Set almost entirely within the premises of a shopping centre, the late Belgian filmmaker Chantal Akerman's musical Golden Eighties follows the romantic entanglements of various mall staff as they attempt to juggle their professional and private lives.  Recently restored in 4K by Belgium's Cinematek, Akerman's film sees the director and Delphine Seyrig reunite more than a decade on from their collaboration on the incredible, shattering Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai du commerce, 1080 Bruxelles.  Whereas Seyrig commanded the screen for virtually all of Jeanne Dielman's three-plus hours, Golden Eighties features an ensemble cast in which she, playing another character named Jeanne, is joined by Myriam Boyer, Belgian pop icon Lio, Fanny Cottençon, Pascale Salkin and Charles Denner, among others.

The plot revolves around Boyer's Sylvie, a coffee shop proprietor longing for her boyfriend who is away seeking his fortune in Québec, and Eli (played by Boyer's real-life husband John Berry), an American former GI who, by chance, reconnects with clothing boutique owner Jeanne, a Jewish woman he looked after following her liberation from the death camps of WW2.  In a setup not unlike that of Alain Resnais' Muriel, in which Seyrig's Hélène receives a visit from an old flame looking to rekindle their past romance, Eli would like to restart his relationship with Jeanne, which ended with her sudden departure.  But Jeanne now has a husband (Denner) and son (Nicolas Tronc), the latter of whom has his own romantic problems as he can't choose between the flighty Lili (Cottençon) and the devoted Mado (Lio).

Golden Eighties is a most atypical film from Akerman, who is best known for her formally rigorous works, and it is easy—and reductive—to view it as her riff on the musical films of Jacques Demy (one of which, Peau d'âne, starred a customarily radiant Seyrig).  Certainly, its songs, pastel colour scheme and theme of idealised love (which eventually yields to more pragmatic needs) are a good fit for a Demy musical, yet there's a Resnaisian wistfulness present here, and Jeanne's past trauma means that the holocaust, not for the first or last time in Akerman's work, comes under consideration (the director's mother survived Auschwitz).  It says much about Akerman's skill that this weighty element can be added in such a way that the resulting film contains not so much as a hint of tonal uncertainty.

It is not inapt to suggest that Golden Eighties is a fine entry point for those unfamiliar with Akerman's oeuvre, and it is certainly the most accessible of her films; as such, it has sometimes been dismissed as one of the director's lesser efforts.  But anyone rejecting any project involving Akerman and Seyrig should do so at their peril, and indeed this film has much more depth than its frothy, cheerful veneer might suggest.  Perhaps the most striking aspect of Golden Eighties is that it was set and made in the middle of the decade of its weirdly prescient title—the film, especially in this restored version, has the look and feel of a fairly recent 80s parody—so the styles and fashions of the era are presented more or less as they were.  Akerman, it seems, was acutely tuned in to the moment she was living in.

Darren Arnold

Images: BFI

The Eighties (Chantal Akerman, 1983)

Chantal Akerman's The Eighties, first released in 1983, is an experimental film that ostensibly offers a behind-the-scenes look at the Belgian director's 1986 musical Golden Eighties.  The film is an idiosyncratic blend of documentary and musical, and for the first of its two distinct halves it focuses on the casting and rehearsal processes involved in staging this elaborate production.  Shot on video, this footage is presented with neither context nor commentary, but it nonetheless highlights the gruelling efforts of the cast and crew as they make incremental progress.  As with Golden Eighties, the first thing glimpsed in The Eighties is a succession of purposefully scurrying women, shot from the knees down.

Given that it was purportedly a tin-rattling dry run for Golden Eighties, The Eighties manages to be a markedly different beast from the later, glossier film, which stands as arguably Akerman's most accessible feature (although a film she made in the same year as The Eighties, the sublime The Man with a Suitcase, is also a good entry point for those unfamiliar with the director's work).  Clearly, there is much that connects the two films, but where Golden Eighties is fluid and straightforward, The Eighties is choppy and fragmented; while Golden Eighties has received a lavish 4K restoration, it seems oddly apt that The Eighties has only recently made it past VHS, the rickety format du jour of its title decade.

After an hour has passed, the raw, freewheeling rehearsal videos give way to several fully-realised 35mm sequences; if indeed Akerman hoped this film would attract financers for Golden Eighties, these slick, polished numbers seem the most likely way to achieve such a goal—so it seems strange that this dazzling footage is relegated to the film's back half.  While the songs and general mise en scène are recognisable to anyone who's seen Golden Eighties, most of the actors are different: Aurore Clément and Magali Noël, both so prominent here, are nowhere to be found in the 1986 film, although Lio appears in both titles.  As such, Golden Eighties is a palimpsest in which faint traces of this phantom film are still visible.

Clément and Noël, who both starred in Akerman's The Meetings of Anna, give full-blooded performances that provide a tantalising glimpse of a production that went unfinished—or did it?  Such is The Eighties' slippery relationship to its near-namesake.  Certainly, it's a truly baffling experience for anyone who hasn't seen Golden Eighties—which would be everyone who saw The Eighties on its initial run in 1983.  This poignant, life-affirming film finds Chantal Akerman at her most mischievous, and she's also a notable presence in front of the camera: witness her joyful, enthusiastic conducting of professional singer Noël's performance in the recording studio, before she herself gamely steps up to the microphone.

Darren Arnold

Images: BFI

De Afspraken van Anna (Chantal Akerman, 1978)

First released in 1975, Chantal Akerman's jaw-dropping masterpiece Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai du commerce, 1080 Bruxelles has since been voted the greatest film of all time; she followed it up with an avant-garde documentary, News from Home, before returning to narrative film with 1978's De Afspraken van Anna.  Variously known as Les Rendez-vous d'Anna and The Meetings of Anna, this introspective and contemplative film wasn't well received upon its initial release, but the decade since her death has seen much, if not all, of Akerman's work reappraised—hence Jeanne Dielman's meteoric rise in critical popularity—and De Afspraken van Anna has recently been restored in 4K by Belgium's Cinematek.

De Afspraken van Anna is an exploration of loneliness, disconnection and the search for meaning in a transient world.  The film focuses on, yep, Anna (Aurore Clément), a Belgian filmmaker and proxy for Akerman, as she treks across Europe to promote her latest movie.  The narrative structure is episodic, with Anna meeting various people over the course of her endless train journeys, including friends, strangers, lovers and relatives; each encounter reveals a different facet of Anna's interior life, but her sense of isolation remains constant.  These lengthy conversations are often marked by a lack of emotional connection—at least on Anna's part—reflecting the title character's own detachment from the world around her.

The film's pacing is glacial, which does allow the viewer to immerse themselves in Anna's world and experience her ennui.  A real strength of the movie—one it shares with Jeanne Dielman—is its ability to capture the quotidian and transform it into something profound and meaningful.  Anna's existence is one of rootlessness and impermanence—quite the opposite of that of Jeanne Dielman, who is more or less confined to her Brussels apartment.  But despite the itinerant Anna's ostensibly glamourous jaunts on the film festival circuit, which are far removed from Jeanne's stultifyingly repetitive domestic chores, Anna has somehow reduced her own life to a level of mundanity that sits on a par with Jeanne's.

Yet De Afspraken van Anna contains nothing in the vein of Jeanne Dielman's shocking dénouement, and the film ends much like it begins.  Akerman's direction is characterised by long, static takes and a minimalist style, which create a sense of stillness, and the film's mise-en-scène is both beautiful and disciplined—qualities which are much more apparent in this newly restored print.  Clément has to carry the entirety of the film, and her Anna is something of a blank canvas, a cipher who seems as interchangeable as the hotels and train stations she pinballs around.  By turns fascinating and exhausting, this austere semi-autobiographical work has taken on an added poignancy since its maker's untimely death.

Darren Arnold

Images: BFI

Raindance 2025: Saturnalia (Daniel Lerch, 2025)

Daniel Lerch's feature debut Saturnalia—which on Friday received its world premiere at the Raindance Film Festival—wears its influences on its sleeve, and anyone with a passing interest in genre cinema will immediately recognise the film's main touchstone as being Dario Argento's 1977 masterpiece Suspiria.  Argento's film was remade, rather loosely but to good effect, by Luca Guadagnino in 2018, although Lerch appears to have little to no interest in that version as he constructs a work that occupies the fine line between homage and pastiche.  Certainly, Lerch's film is the most overt riff on Argento since Brussels-based duo Hélène Cattet and Bruno Forzani served up The Strange Colour of Your Body's Tears in 2013.

Just like Argento's Suspiria, the 1970s-set Saturnalia begins with a taxi ride on a rain-lashed night as a female student heads to her new boarding school.  Lerch's protagonist is Miriam Basconi (Sophia Anthony, excellent), an orphaned young woman who has been sent to Alstroemerias Academy, an exclusive and elite Virginian college presided over by the bellicose Ms. Hemlock (Velvet), who predictably makes life very difficult for her feisty new charge—as do two other girls (Maddie Siepe, Morgan Messina) in the cohort.  As the hazing continues, the only potential allies for the new arrival take the form of Hemlock's louche enforcer Holden (Dante Blake) and the mousy, victimised Hannah (Amariah Dionne).  

Here, as in Suspiria, it's clear that the crimes of those running the school extend way beyond their harsh treatment of some of the boarders, and Hemlock makes little attempt to disguise her viciousness.  The mystery here is not who, but why, and Lerch sets about whipping up an atmosphere of dread and anxiety as the student population starts to decrease, and he's aided by some fine cinematography from Max Fischer, who also doubled as the film's producer.  Suspiria is often misidentified as a giallo, which is perhaps understandable given Dario Argento's prominence in the genre, but its no-surprises nature is one it shares with Saturnalia and marks it out from the likes of Deep Red, Tenebrae and The Cat o' Nine Tails.

Fischer's camerawork does a good job of approximating the look of Suspiria, a film whose vivid colour palette served as a last hurrah of sorts for the Technicolor process in Italy—Argento used the company's last facility in Rome for his film—as cheaper alternatives were becoming available.  But Saturnalia's biggest coup is securing the services of the legendary Claudio Simonetti to provide the score; Simonetti and his band Goblin composed the music for many an Argento film, including, naturally, Suspiria, and his perfectly calibrated contribution to Saturnalia augments the film without ever being showy.  This is an assured, well-crafted horror, one that will hopefully enjoy a long life on the cult movie circuit.

Darren Arnold

Images: FilmFreeway

Cannes Film Festival 2025: Belgian Selections

Several Belgian-funded titles will be screening at this month's Cannes Film Festival (13–24 May), including Cédric Klapisch's Colours of Time, Sylvain Chomet's The Magnificent Life of Marcel Pagnol and Momoko Seto's Dandelion's Odyssey. In Colours of Time, four cousins discover they share a mysterious family history; in 1895, their ancestor Adèle, then aged 21, leaves her hometown to search for her mother in a Paris bustling with newfound avant-garde creativity. As her descendants retrace her steps, they unravel Adèle's past. The two timelines of 1895 and 2024 intertwine and collide, confronting the cousins’ contemporary attitudes with life in late 19th-century Paris, leaving everyone’s future forever changed.

Animated Luxembourgish co-production The Magnificent Life of Marcel Pagnol focuses on the eponymous author. At the height of his fame, Pagnol is commissioned by the editor-in-chief of a major women’s magazine to write a literary serial, in which he is free to recount his childhood. As he pens the opening pages, the child he once was—little Marcel—suddenly appears before him. In fellow animated title Dandelion's Odyssey, four dandelion achenes that survive a series of nuclear explosions are propelled into the cosmos. After crash-landing on an unknown planet, they set out in search of soil where their species might survive. However, they must face countless obstacles: the elements, fauna, flora, the climate.

Source/images: THE PR FACTORY

Brussels IFFF: Hello Stranger (Paul Raschid, 2024)

Hello Stranger, which will have its Belgian premiere on Saturday evening as part of this year's Brussels International Fantastic Film Festival, is a new psychological horror-thriller interactive film from Paul Raschid (The Complex, Five Dates, Ten Dates, The Gallery).  Coming to Valve's PC service Steam next month, Hello Stranger tells the chilling story of a man trapped in his smart home by a masked stranger who forces him to play three games to survive.  Hello Stranger boasts a cast including Sir Derek Jacobi, George Blagden, Danny Griffin, Christina Wolfe, Kulvinder Ghir, Laura Whitmore and Yasmin Finney.

The film centres on Cam, who conducts life exclusively from his smart home—work, shopping, entertainment and, most notably, socialising.  Cam interacts with strangers on the Hello Stranger platform, a randomised video chatting application.  Eventually, he encounters a masked stranger with an altered voice.  Unnerved, Cam leaves the call only to find the stranger has hacked his smart home and locked him in.  The stranger tells Cam that he must win three rounds of games, or it is ‘game over’.  Viewers must make decisions and play the three games for Cam to survive—but one wrong move could lead to a grisly end.

Paul Raschid wrote and directed Hello Stranger—which features over four hours of filmed content and 10 possible endings—and is one of the world’s most prolific interactive filmmakers.  Before focusing on interactive films, Raschid was a linear feature filmmaker; his most notable credit is as writer-director of sci-fi thriller White Chamber, for which Shauna Macdonald won Best Actress at BAFTA Scotland 2018.  It was released on Netflix following selection for 10 film festivals worldwide, including Brussels IFFF, Edinburgh IFF, BiFan (South Korea), FrightFest (London), Sitges IFFF, and Mumbai FF.

Source/images: Polymath PR

BFI Flare: Queens of Drama (Alexis Langlois, 2024)

Filmed over the course of five weeks in Brussels, Alexis Langlois' feature debut Queens of Drama is a reflection on the dualistic nature of fame and the often rocky journey artists undergo in their pursuit of success.  This Belgian co-production has already screened at several film festivals, including London and Gent, and it plays at BFI Flare on Wednesday.  Often more odious than melodious, this shrill musical drama follows Mimi Madamour (Louiza Aura) and Billie Kohler (Gio Ventura), two young women who audition for a cutthroat singing reality TV series that bears more than a passing resemblance to The Voice.

Mimi is selected in the competition and goes on to enjoy a glittering pop career, one largely built on anodyne smash hit "Don't Touch", while Billie is rejected by the show but carves out a name for herself in the underground punk scene.  Langlois weaves a star-crossed romance between these contrasting characters, who make a connection (of sorts) during their brief time together on the TV show.  Also looming large in the story is Mylène Farmer-esque pop star Magalie Charmer (Asia Argento), whose stint at the apex of mainstream music serves as a blueprint for Mimi, who seeks to emulate this stalwart performer's success and longevity.

Despite the very different paths taken by Mimi and Billie, they don't lose track of each other, and the film charts the peaks and troughs of their careers and relationship; a song is never too far away as Langlois attempts to prop up a sagging narrative with musical interludes fashioned by the likes of Yelle, Pierre Desprats, and Louise BSX.  Ultimately, Queens of Drama buckles under the weight of its near two-hour running time, which is padded out by highly repetitive sequences, many of which feature onetime Eurovision contestant Bilal Hassani, who gets way too much screen time as tiresome stan Steevyshady.

Hassani commandeers the film's opening scene in a manner that might sink the hearts of many viewers who, like me, wrongly conclude that they'll have to endure 114 minutes of his grating character; mercifully, Steevy soon makes way for the two protagonists, with the role subsequently functioning more or less as that of a Greek chorus.  Queens of Drama isn't all bad—game newcomers Ventura and Aura both deliver brave, committed performances, and the film is nearly always visually interesting, largely on account of its Day-Glo colour palette—but at least half an hour of it should have been left on the cutting room floor.

Darren Arnold

Images: BFI

BFI Flare: Cherub (Devin Shears, 2024) / Gender Reveal

Devin Shears' virtually dialogue-free Cherub, which screens on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday as part of this year's BFI Flare, is a poignant study in loneliness.  This Canadian feature, which served as Shears' thesis at Toronto's York University, centres on Harvey (Benjamin Turnbull), a shy, overweight lab technician who embarks on a journey of self-discovery after finding a copy of the eponymous magazine, which celebrates larger men (90s Belgian publication The Fat Angel Times inspired both this fictional magazine and the film itself).  Turnbull delivers a brave, touching performance as Harvey, capturing the character's hopeful longing for connection in a world in which he's more or less invisible.  

The project began as a short—the initial script ran to just eight pages—but soon reached a running time that saw it morph into a feature-length endeavour.  On occasion, Cherub does feel a little like a padded-out short, but such moments are fleeting.  Boxed into a 4:3 aspect ratio, Harvey goes about the daily drudge sans complaint, and Turnbull, without the luxury of dialogue, skilfully conveys the character's keen sense of isolation.  Many other Harveys in many other films have been reduced to mere objects of ridicule, but while Shears' film is not without humour, it never stoops to making fun of its wistful protagonist.  This is a moving and wonderfully empathetic work, and a fine example of low-to-no-budget filmmaking.

Another Canadian title showing at Flare is Mo Matton's amusing Gender Reveal, which plays alongside Dutch filmmaker Jop Leuven's Marleen in Sunday's shorts programme I Like Who I Like.  Matton is better known for their work as an intimacy coordinator on films such as Close to You (Flare 2024), but has already directed a couple of shorts prior to Gender Reveal.  Their latest effort follows three flamboyant housemates—Rhys (Ayo Tsalithaba), Ting (Ke Xin Li) and Mati (Alex Miron Dauphin)—who attend a dull, squirm-inducing gender reveal party hosted by Rhys' boss Marc (Alexandre Bacon) and his wife Chloë (Lauren Beatty).  The uneasy trio, who are in a three-way relationship, try to grimace their way through the event.

Being a Canadian production, it shouldn't surprise anyone to learn that a smattering of Gender Reveal's dialogue is en québécois, but even the well-meaning if clumsy small talk of Marc, who is also the father-to-be, does little to assuage these guests' discomfort—irrespective of the language employed.  But it isn't long before all this cringing gives way to something more sanguineous, as Matton gleefully orchestrates a riotously gory finale.  If there's a complaint to be made here, it's that Gender Reveal ends too soon; perhaps it should have spent a bit longer in the oven, à la Cherub, and you can't help but feel that there's a potential feature in there.  But even as it is, Matton's impish film is tremendously good fun.

Darren Arnold

Images: Festival Scope

BFI Flare: Sad Jokes (Fabian Stumm, 2024)

Sad Jokes, directed by and starring Fabian Stumm (Bones and Names, Bruxelles), screens tomorrow and on Sunday as part of this year's BFI Flare.  The story follows Stumm's Joseph, a filmmaker who lives with his close friend Sonya (Haley Louise Jones), who also happens to be the mother of his child.  Sonya is struggling with her mental health and has spent the last few months in and out of a clinic, from which she tends to discharge herself before her treatment is complete.  As Sonya attempts to get her life back on track, Joseph becomes the primary caregiver to their son, Pino (Justus Meyer), while working on various film projects.

Joseph has recently completed one film, which is about to premiere, and is preparing to shoot another, an absurdist comedy whose script is currently failing to convince producer Gero (Godehard Giese).  Given his work commitments and parenting duties, it is mildly surprising to learn that Joseph has the time to attend life-drawing classes, but it is there that he persuades his sunny, likeable teacher Elin (Ulrica Flach) to work on his new film.  Elin is tasked with moulding a ridiculously outsized head based on Joseph, which perhaps tells us something about his ego—although he generally comes across as a fairly grounded sort.

One of Sad Jokes' early scenes (pictured top) sees Joseph playing shopkeepers with Pino.  Perhaps inevitably, the goods involved are DVDs from Joseph's own collection, and this interaction plays out against a backdrop of a bookcase crammed with an extensive range of films, many of which are from UK label Artificial Eye.  The titles that find their way into Pino's bag include an Éric Rohmer box set, which underlines what one of Sad Jokes' key cinematic reference points is.  With this in mind, it would be easy to dismiss the film as a Rohmer pastiche, but Stumm injects enough of his own distinct style into proceedings.

The director is good value in the lead role, but although Joseph is the main character, Fabian Stumm generously makes room for others to shine: Jones doesn't get a great deal of screen time, but nevertheless impresses as the troubled Sonya, while the excellent Flach—a Swedish theatre veteran who here makes her feature debut—provides a genuinely showstopping moment with her superb delivery of a Joan of Arc speech.  The beautifully photographed Sad Jokes is a solid, assured piece of work, one that demonstrates real progress on the part of its talented writer-director, whose next film will be set in Belgium.

Darren Arnold

Images: BFI

Julie zwijgt (Leonardo van Dijl, 2024)

Kortrijk native Leonardo van Dijl's feature debut Julie zwijgt (English: Julie Keeps Quiet) is a solid, if occasionally ambiguous, psychological drama that delves into the vagaries of human emotion and the strength of silence.  This nuanced film, selected as Belgium's entry for Best International Feature Film at the Academy Awards, was written by the director and Ruth Becquart, and stars Becquart, Tessa van den Broeck and Laurent Caron.  Its narrative is set against the backdrop of an elite Belgian tennis academy, where the protagonist of the title (Van den Broeck) faces a moral dilemma when her coach, Jeremy (Caron), is suspended.

The dedicated, driven and solitary Julie is quite clearly the best tennis player in the current cohort, but her life is upended when allegations surface against the oily Jeremy, whose conduct may have spurred the suicide of another highly promising student, Aline.  When the rather inscrutable Julie's classmates come forward to speak out, she—as per the title—opts to keep quiet.  This key decision forms the nub of the story, which explores themes of peer pressure and the isolating weight of silence.  Julie zwijgt is a film that invites the viewer to reflect on the power of their own voice, and how they might choose to use (or withhold) it.

Julie zwijgt's production journey is an interesting one: the film's genesis lies in Van Dijl's 2015 short Umpire, which was awarded a VAF Wildcard; the feature was announced in March 2023, and the project quickly gained momentum with the involvement of the revered Dardenne brothers—who co-produced the film through their company Les Films du Fleuve—and Cargo director Gilles Coulier.  Playwright Florian Zeller and tennis player Naomi Osaka served as executive producers, with the collaboration between these luminaries from very different fields adding an extra layer of authenticity to this well-rounded film.

Julie zwijgt throws light on the hidden battles many face in their daily lives, and it presents viewers with the stark calculus of the consequences that come with walking the path of the lone wolf, which in this case involves facing extreme adversity; moreover, Van Dijl's film forces us to consider the cost of silence and the scars it leaves behind.  As a drama that tackles real-world issues and examines the human psyche, the assured Julie zwijgt is a timely exploration of a thorny subject matter; the film's success on the festival circuit and the fanfare surrounding its release suggest that it will ignite debate for some time yet.

Darren Arnold

Images: Flanders Image

Maldoror (Fabrice du Welz, 2024)

Despite his Belgian nationality, Fabrice du Welz has often been linked with the New French Extremity, as has that fine performer Laurent Lucas, whose extensive work in the movement includes Leos Carax's Pola X, Julia Ducournau's Raw, Marina de Van's In My Skin, and a trio of films for Bertrand Bonello.  Maldoror sees du Welz once again reunite with Lucas, who previously starred in the director's films Calvaire, Adoration and Alleluia.  As with du Welz's feature debut Calvaire, Maldoror pits Lucas against a quite diabolical character played by Jackie Berroyer, an actor who has never been more sinister than in his work for du Welz, which also includes a turn in Inexorable (pictured below), whose female leads Alba Gaïa Bellugi—sister of Galatéa— and Mélanie Doutey both have roles in Maldoror.

While Du Welz's longstanding fascination with the macabre is present in the riveting Maldoror, what is conspicuous by its absence is the streak of jet-black humour normally associated with his work; given that the film focuses on the case of Marc Dutroux, Belgium's most notorious child killer, this seems wholly appropriate.  Many consider the string of abduction murders carried out by Dutroux to be the worst crimes in Belgian history—indeed, the impact of the case was so profound that one-third of Belgians with the surname Dutroux sought to change their last name.  Prior to the Dutroux affair, the Charleroi suburb of Marcinelle was best known for a 1950s mining accident that killed 262 people; that this disaster has now been eclipsed says much about these brutal murders' terrible legacy.

As such, du Welz needed to take a most cautious approach when preparing his film, which features some fabricated elements in order to provide a sense of justice that many Belgians felt was lacking from the real-life case (the director has cited Tarantino's Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood as a key influence in this regard).  The names of the characters have been fictionalised, with Sergi López's skin-crawling Marcel Dedieu serving as a proxy for Dutroux as Anthony Bajon's young police officer Paul Chartier becomes obsessed with linking the suspect to the disappearance of two young girls.  The impulsive Chartier is largely hamstrung by both his jobsworth boss Hinkel (Lucas) and a system in which, à la David Fincher's Zodiac, three separate police services are rarely on the same page.

Maldoror is a police procedural that has much else in common with Fincher's touchstone of the subgenre: each film runs to over two and a half hours and features a protagonist whose monomaniacal devotion to cracking a serial killer case results in the loss of their job and family.  In choosing to focus on the investigation as opposed to the crimes, du Welz handles the material in a subtle, tactful manner—yet Maldoror remains a queasy spectacle, one that will prove too strong for some.  It is now almost 30 years since Dutroux was apprehended—he was caught in 1996, the same year the death penalty was abolished in Belgium—but this dreadful episode remains a highly sensitive matter for many of Fabrice du Welz's compatriots, as does the topic of his next film: the rubber trade in the Belgian Congo.

Darren Arnold

Images: BFI

Flow (Gints Zilbalodis, 2024)

With roots dating back to the 1930s, Latvian animation has greatly evolved in the decades since, employing a wide range of techniques and styles that reflect the country's cultural heritage.  The earliest examples of Latvian animation saw several pioneers, including woodcut artist Oļģerts Ābelīte and newspaper cartoonist Ernests Rirdāns, experimenting with various forms of storytelling.  Today, Latvian animators generally subscribe to the auteur theory, in which filmmakers are recognised for their unique voices and signatures; one such director is Gints Zilbalodis, who made his feature debut with 2019's Away.

Zilbalodis' new film Flow, which opens in Dutch cinemas on Boxing Day, marks a significant milestone in animated cinema—Latvian or otherwise.  Penned by the director alongside producer Matīss Kaža, this wordless film follows the journey of a saucer-eyed cat who, after a cataclysmic flood, finds itself on a boat with a range of other animals—including a lemur, a capybara and a golden retriever.  Together, the group must navigate this watery, hostile environment, a challenge that forces them to learn to work as a team.  This setup allows Zilbalodis plenty of scope to explore themes such as survival, friendship and adaptation.

This collaborative spirit is reflected in the production of the pan-European Flow, which was made with support from various funding bodies, with the film's audio post-production work being completed in Belgium.  Flow's great success at the 2024 Annecy International Animation Film Festival, where it won the Jury, Audience, Best Original Music and Gan Foundation awards, is a marker of its affecting story and top-drawer animation.  The film crystallises some of life's most essential elements, and its ability to convey complex emotions without relying on sentimentality—or even dialogue—is wholly admirable.

As the film limbers up for its theatrical release in the Netherlands, it provides a reminder that animation is not confined to children's entertainment but is rather an exceptionally powerful medium for storytelling, one that can move people of all ages; Flow's universality is enhanced by the complete absence of a language barrier.  At no point does the film explicitly attribute its subject matter to climate change—a point that is self-evident—which is testament to its sophistication.  Flow's narrative and emotional depth set it apart from every other animated film released this year; do not miss this instant classic.

Darren Arnold

Images: BFI / Charades