European Films

Arriving at a festival that is already in full swing is like trying to hop on a merry go round that is already in motion. Thankfully it is not the first time I’m in Cannes, so at least I know my way around. Pick up the accreditation in the cellar of the bunker (as the Palais des festivals is often irreverently referred to). Try to see as many press agents as possible to fix the schedule of screenings and interviews. Try to catch up with friends randomly encountered on the Croisette, the boulevard that straddles the deserted Côte d’Azur beach – it’s pouring in Cannes at the moment – and connects all the important festival locations.

 

Umbrellas and chic raincoats are de rigeur outside (and designer sunglasses far from outlawed), but inside everyone is united in the democracy of the dark auditoria. Because it is for the movies that we are all here in the end.

 
Aanrijding in Moscou (Moscow, Belgium)
Crossover hits from Flanders are rare and Flemish working-class romantic comedies even less so, but director Christophe van Rompaey may have actually made both when he made his feature film debut Aanrijding in Moscou (Moscow, Belgium). Especially during its first hour, the Flemish boxoffice sensation toys with cliché material with such an assured sense of direction and such a strong screenplay that it simply is a pleasure to watch. The closing 40-odd minutes do not sustain this sense of wonderment over the near-perfect almost-familiar, but thanks in large part to a wonderful cast led by Barbara Sarafian the film is still something that might light up screens elsewhere in Europe. The film is part of the Critics’ Week selection here at the Cannes Film Festival.

Safarian is Matty, a fierce fortysomething whose life seems to come apart after a minor collision (the “aanrijding” of the Flemish title) with a truck transporting Italian lollipops. The 29-year-old redhead driver Johnny (Jurgen Delnaet) has not only bruised her car but also her sense of self. Her art teacher husband Werner (Johan Heldenbergh) is trying to work out whether he prefers Matty to one of his 22-year-old students, while their three children are trying to figure out where they stand in relation to the opportunities and pratfalls of puberty. As Johnny worms his way into the heart of Matty and the lives of the other members of this dysfunctional but lovable family, it becomes clear that everyone has a right to happiness but that this right can only be obtained by making choices, which is not always easy.

The screenplay was written by the novel-writing duo Pat van Beirs and Jean-Claude van Rijckeghem. Beirs also translated several animated comedies into Flemish, including Chicken Run and Monsters Inc, while Van Rijckeghem also had a hand in the equally warm-hearted yet truthful Man zkt vrouw (A Perfect Match). In their screenplay, comedy, drama and nicely observed character-building moments are finely interwoven in the first hour, with the loose yet composed camera movements of cinematographer Ruben Impens following suit. When buried secrets surface and romance, drama and comedy are forced to awkwardly intermingle at a crucial dinner scene, however, Van Rompaey creates something of a dent of his own in this otherwise utterly pleasant surprise from Flanders.

Soi Cowboy
Thai director Apichatpong Weerasethakul (Tropical Malady) might have found a European acolyte in the surprising person of UK director Thomas Clay, who shot his second film Soi Cowboy on location in Thailand. The story of a portly European (Denmark’s Nicolas Bro, Offscreen) and his local girlfriend “saved” from the bars is also a bifurcated drama with two only loosely connected stories, but rather than reaching the heights of the Thai Boy Wonder’s films, Clay’s follow-up to the promising if extreme The Great Ecstasy of Robert Carmichael only proves that it requires more than just pointing a camera somewhere to create mystery and meaning. The fact that the first twenty minutes are without dialogue and that more than half of it is in black-and-white will mean the death knell for this film in any commercial ventures. The film is part of the Un certain regard section here in Cannes.

 

That Clay has a fondness for the ennui generated by simply waiting is clear, as both Robert Carmichael and Soi Cowboy share a structural similarity in which the running time is used against the viewer in an attempt to generate a quiet before the storm-type anticipation that cannot but end with a violent catharsis. The problem with Soi Cowboy is that this quiet is awfully quiet. Antonioni, to whom this film pays “indirect homage” as the director puts it, made ennui exciting cinematographically, but Clay’s screenplay and editing leave out almost anything that might make the two main characters worthwhile to take an interest in for an hour or two.