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FILMS / REVIEWS Belgium

Review: The Last Temptation of the Belgians

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- Unpredictable director Jan Bucquoy adds the final touch to his autobiography, following on from La Vie Sexuelle des Belges and Camping Cosmos, in the form of a drama flirting with humour

Review: The Last Temptation of the Belgians
Wim Willaert and Alice On the Roof in The Last Temptation of the Belgians

Due for release in Belgium tomorrow, 2 February, courtesy of Film and Com, The Last Temptation of the Belgians [+see also:
trailer
interview: Jan Bucquoy
film profile
]
, is the third instalment of a filmed (and slightly fictionalised!) autobiography put forth by Jan Bucquoy, a provocative Belgian artist and jack-of-all-trades known as much for his films as for his intimate yet priceless Underwear Museum. He’s been playing with conventions and having fun with his status as a libertarian and situationist artist for several decades now: his cinema alter ego tried to bring Marxism-Leninism to Flanders in the first opus of his trilogy, then attempted to bring about a coup d’état in Brussels in the second, before deciding in this latest opus to encourage Wallonia to imagine a fairer distribution of riches by abolishing inheritance and allocating funds via a lottery system.

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But behind all the agitprop hides a grieving father mourning his suicidal daughter. Marie is no longer interested in life, a life in which her father has reappeared, as if by magic, after missing her entire childhood. A life which is holding on by a thread, composed of stories which her father is determined to tell, like some sort of Flemish-accented Shéhérazade. And just like in One Thousand and One Nights, Jan offers up a succession of short stories, one thousand and one tiny depictions of his life. He looks back on the two biggest components of his life: women and art. He finds all the right words: "Love is about giving what we don’t have to someone who doesn’t want it," or "I stopped with commercial cinema to make experimental, arthouse cinema, but it’s more experimental than artistic."

But in the end, we mostly remember that you "don’t always need to turn the page, sometimes you need to destroy it,” because The Last Temptation of the Belgians is first and foremost the story of a father and his daughter. It’s a universal subject, mostly inspired by Jan Bucquoy’s journey, which transforms the pain of living as a grieving father into a great cinematic circus in order to exorcise pain through laughter and to heal wounds by using the right words and recounting a fistful of funny situations.

Having previously teamed up with Jean-Henri Compère, the filmmaker’s alter ego in La Vie sexuelle des belges (1994) and Camping Cosmos (1996), the director set his sights on actor Wim Willaert. Bucquoy then wrote the part for young Belgian musician Alice On the Roof, who stars opposite Willaert and wavers between a certain sense of pragmatism and beautiful weirdness. Throughout his career, Jan has had a loyal playmate whose affluence and opportunism are in sharp contrast with his awkwardness. The partner in question is played by Alex Vizorek who’s stepping into his first significant film role and slots into the slightly cobbled-together but seriously sincere world of Jan Bucquoy perfectly.

We might often smile, or feel moved, or sometimes gently mock Bucquoy’s wacky ideas and totally punk tendency to make do with what’s at hand, but tragedy bubbles away beneath the surface of this story, which is that of a father trying to make up for all the meetings he missed with his daughter. Ultimately, The Last Temptation of the Belgians might actually be a tragedy. But it’s a burlesque tragedy, in the proper sense of the word: a drama suffused with disconcerting and extravagant humour.

Presented in a premiere at the Tournai Ramdam Festival, The Last Temptation of the Belgians is produced by Stenola Productions, while international sales fall to Be For Films.

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(Translated from French)

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