14/12/2011

Hitting screens in Belgium this Wednesday is Frank Van Mechelen’s Germaine (Groenten uit Balen), a social comedy about the nine weeks that disrupt the life of a Belgian family against the backdrop of the workers’ struggle, with strikes and first loves. Set in the 1970s, the film promises to bring back a flood of memories like Proust’s madeleine, by playing the nostalgia card, which could well attract audiences to theatres in this festive season. All the more so as the film stars a great deal of actors “seen on TV”: Germaine (Evelien Bosmans) and the rest of the cast (Stany Crets, Axel Daeseleire, Koen De Bouw, ClaraCleymans, Michel Van Dousselaere) are all well-known faces to Flemish TV viewers. Knowing the success of TV series adapted for the big screen in Flanders (as confirmed by the recent success of Code 37 [+see also:
trailer
film profile]) leads us to believe that this ensemble cast will win over Flemish audiences.

Germaine marks Van Mechelen’s big-screen comeback. Although he has regularly got behind the camera for the Flemish detective series Aspe, his last big-screen production dates back to 2006, which was a particularly prolific year for the director, as he reached the box-office heights with two films, The Intruder and especially Hell In Tangier [+see also:
trailer
film profile].

Germaine, which received backing from the Vlaams Audiovisual Fund, is produced by Skyline Entertainment, a large Belgian production company specialised in television, which also has a film arm, whose latest production was indeed Hell In Tangier. Kinepolis Film Distribution is releasing the film in about 33 theatres, which is a very generous print-run comparable to the recent releases of Code 37 and Madonna’s Pig.

This week also sees the release of Pierre Rambaldi’s Les Tribulations d’une Caissière [+see also:
trailer
film profile] (“The Tribulations of a Checkout Girl”), starring Déborah François. Co-produced by Nexus, the film is adapted from Anna Sam’s best-selling account of the everyday life of a checkout worker.

(Translated from French)