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BRIFF 2018

Review: Doubleplusungood

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- Marco Laguna’s out-of-this-world film charts the extravagant, epic, savage and psychedelic odyssey of a flamboyant and mystical assassin

Review: Doubleplusungood
Philippe Genion in Doubleplusungood

Doubleplusungood [+see also:
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by Marco Laguna is a full-blown cinematic experience in and of itself, which has been selected to compete in the National Competition section of the Brussels International Film Festival this year, and which follows in the footsteps of a somewhat mystical killer who has set himself a very specific goal.

The year is 2018, and after 15 years of exile, Dago Cassandra returns to his kingdom – an imaginary land - with just one divine mission in mind: to kill the 12 apostles of Lucifer who represent the evil pyramid of power… a holy crusade which will draw him into an endless spiral of death and murder.

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The story moves along somewhat erratically, punctuated by the corpses strewn along the way by our Cassandra. Each murder is framed independently of the others, infusing the film with as many styles as there are tributes to the cinematographic and literary passions of the director, because, ultimately, Doubleplusungood is a tribute film; a tribute to an imagined America, now relegated to old, black and white films and second-hand thrillers; a tribute to those who have an uncommon feeling for words and a fondness for oration. In fact, Cassandra reels off well-placed words with as much gusto as he fondles the beads of his rosary, reciting the holy scriptures as he goes about his work, splattering and smearing them with blood-spray in the process. It’s also a tribute to genre films – and many genres of films - from chainsaw massacres to high-octane car-chases, with its abundance of nice cars, spectacular losers, handguns and other weapons of a murderous kind.

Doubleplusungood could, then, be described as an homage film, an art film, and possibly even a cult film. Teeming with references, we get a strong sense of Marco Laguna’s deep deep love for a certain idea of America, of thriller films, of antiheros. Over the course of the 12 murders – the 12 vignettes which come to form the film - where the hero revels triumphantly in the ever-spectacular staging of his victims’ downfall, Marco Laguna shoots Belgium as if he were in California, keeping pace with his hero (played by the musician, Wild Dee), who is some sort of hyper, cinema-genic cross between an aged and traumatised Robert De Niro and a vintage, private detective lost to the dark side of the force.

Extravagant, epic, psychedelic, fetishist, savage, punk - Doubleplusungood is all that and more. It’s the first full-length film by Marco Laguna, who’s more widely known as the singer from alternative rock band, La Muerte. A lover of photography and cinema, and a director and producer of music videos for some years now, Laguna spent 5 years filming Doubleplusungood on an incredibly tight budget. The movie is, of course, also produced by the director, who had to resort to crowd-funding to cover the cost of the (mini) project. His is a marginal film then, in all senses of the word, and this could go down very well with viewers who have a cult-like reverence for marginals who take risks.

Produced by Stempel and Topcare, Doubleplusungood has already been selected for the Strange Festival in Paris and for the Brussels International Fantastic Film Festival, while on Monday evening, it was presented in the National Competition segment of the first Brussels International Film Festival.

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