European Films

After exploring the drab, working-class environment of a Walloon industrial town in his feature debut Miss Montigny, Belgian director Miel Van Hoogenbemt looks at the brighter side of life in his second feature Man zkt vrouw (A Perfect Match), a Dutch-language treat that suggests that life in Flanders is both wackier and more loveable than in Wallonia (at least based on these two films). The shift of gears from kitchen-sink drama to romantic comedy sounds even more improbable if one takes into account that it is in the latter that a Romanian immigrant cleaning lady plays the female lead. The reluctant male hero of Man zkt vrouw is played to perfection by Flemish veteran actor Jan Decleir in a rare -- but not less finely calibrated -- comic turn.

 

The opening sequence sets the tone with something that plays like a Flemish-language outtake from a film by Roy Andersson (Du levande / You, the Living). The colleagues of retiring school director Leopold (Decleir) have organised a little goodbye drink for him, toasting to his departure and reminding him of their love for his beloved and much-missed wife. As soon as the celebratory speeches are over, the little groups of attending teachers turn inward to chat amongst themselves, leaving Leopold all alone at his own farewell party. At home later that evening, the light bulb in the kitchen gives up the ghost, forcing Leopold to eat his lonely meal by the light of his opened refrigerator.

 

When, the next day, his cleaning lady Ada (Leny Breederveld) announces that she will return to Romania, Leopold is ready for a depression of epic proportions. He only sees one way out of it: find a woman to keep him company, and on the instigation of his slightly barmy neighbour Julien (Wim Opbrouck), he starts a serious search on the website truelove.com. So caught up in the huge task of sorting through possible candidates, he almost forgets to pick up a relative of Ada from the station who has come to replace her – at least for a couple of weeks. This is Alina (Maria Popistasu, from Legături bolnăvicioase / Love Sick), who is so young that it seems doubtful at first that the retired Leopold might transfer his eternally unspoken love for Ada to her sprightly and very young relative.

 

Besides a montage of various unsuitable women Leopold meets on dates organised through truelove.com, Van Hoogenbemt rarely goes for the obvious, even if Leopold’s eventual attraction for Alina is a given. The director and actors work hard to reduce the possible ick-factor to a minimum, for example in a scene in which Alina calls Leopold her "bunic" or grandfather, which allows the director to milk Decleir’s pained reaction shot for all it is worth, effectively getting the audience on the side of the character.

 

Considering that it mixes elements as varying as slapstick comedy, character study, love story, immigrant drama and even a dash of science fiction, the screenplay credited to Pierre De Clercq, Jean-Claude Van Rijckeghem and the director feels surprisingly coherent. The ending also finds exactly the right note between upbeat and quiet sadness. Unlike the outcome of many romantic comedies, this one could have been taken from life.

 

However good the script, it is Decleir’s finely nuanced performance that is the cement of the movie, keeping all the varying elements together because his character remains believable throughout. It is a delight to see him in the film’s two slickly choreographed slapstick pieces: one a breakfast mayhem scene in which he discovers that good housekeeping is not something that can be genetically passed on and the other a scene in a supermarket in which he tries to escape from the view of one of his truelove.com disaster dates.

 

Van Hoogenbemt seems fond of casting experienced actors such as Decleir here or Ariane Ascaride in Miss Montigny opposite bright young talents such as Popistasu or Sophie Quinton, a bet that paid of handsomely in both cases. Popistasu, who speaks in Dutch for most of the film, impresses not only with her language skills but also with her presence; she easily holds her own opposite Decleir and the combination of her character’s general clumsiness and winning smile make her lovable in spite of herself. Francophone actress Manuela Servais appears in a cameo as a Brussels-born, Ghent-based woman who might be the most serious of Leopold’s dates and underlines the ease with which Van Hoogenbemt moves back and forth between the two linguistic communities in Belgium, something that is unfortunately still quite rare.

 

Technical credits are extremely polished for a Belgian production, with the city of Ghent handsomely portrayed in both interiors and exteriors and an escape to the French coast a welcome change of scenery. The work of cinematographer Frank van den Eeden is the opposite of his damp and rotten village in the woods he so convincingly sketched in Een ander zijn geluk (Someone Else's Happiness). The film’s staccato score by Spinvis has a slight Chinese ring to it before settling into more conventional rhythms.

 

The Dutch title literally means "Man looking for woman" as it is reduced in short newspaper ads and could be translated to English as "M4W".