Cast:
Benoît Poelvoorde (Ben), Valérie Parent (Valerie), Rémy Belvaux (Remy - Reporter), André Bonzel (Andre - Cameraman), Jean-Marc Chenut (Patrick - Sound Man #1), Alain Oppezzi (Franco - Sound Man #2), and Vincent Tavier (Vincent - Sound Man #3) Produced and Directed by Rémy Belvaux, André Bonzel and Benoît Poelvoorde.
Review:
Admittedly, Belgium has never gotten a fair shake (with one exception) from Movie Night despite the fact that it has a distinct identity within three official languages of Dutch, French, and German. So why not feature a French-language film done with the goal of doing so in cheap effectiveness? Belvaux, Bonzel, and Poelvoorde first worked together with "Pas de C4 pour Daniel Daniel" (1987), a mock trailer about a secret agent named Daniel Daniel (the trio had attended film school together in Belgium). At any rate, when it came to this film for collaboration, they wrote it with Vincent Tavier, although Belvaux was solely responsible for the story; the trio also produced the film and starred in it, as I'm sure you are aware. You might not be aware though, that the relatives depicted in the film are actually relatives of Poelvoorde, who didn't know what the subject matter was beyond just a documentary on him. In the decades since release, it has served as a great peak for its key directors/stars. Poelvoorde has been a regular presence in Belgian filmmaking as an actor. Belvaux never directed another feature film, instead becoming a director for commercials on television before he committed suicide in 2006. Bonzel returned to feature film directing with Flickering Ghosts of Loves Gone By in 2021.Incidentally, this is actually a found footage film on the basis of one certain scene, which amuses me because of the fact that it means that it is a superior found footage movie than subsequent films that are thought to be more of a part of the classification of (overrated) stuff such as The Blair Witch Project (1999). Of course, as a film detailing documentary filmmaking, a couple of films could to spring to mind, such as Real Life (1979), with the muddling of filmmaker and subject. Actually, when the filmmakers were interviewed upon release of the film, they stated that the subject of the film was being a critique on the very nature of documentary filmmaking as opposed to being about the violence. Naturally, this film generated a tiny bit of controversy due to its subject matter of a serial killer making their rounds with rampant violence (well, Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer, was only released six years earlier). An edited version of the film (done for release in certain markets that wouldn't let stuff considered too much or "NC-17" play in rentals or otherwise) took out a sequence involving a gang-rape. The film is known in its native country as "C'est arrivé près de chez vous", which translates to "It Happened Near Your Home", but "man bites dog" is a journalism term that involves what kind of story would get the best chance of reporting between a man biting a dog or a dog biting a man.
Evidently, one big lover of the film was Quentin Tarantino, who loved the film so much when he saw it at the Cannes Film Festival that he took a swing at a security guard when he couldn't get past him for the second screening. I mention this due to the coincidence of him having later written a script that became Natural Born Killers (1994) that dealt with a cameraman looking upon the perspective of charismatic killers that wasn't a mockumentary. I think you can agree that this is a technical triumph when it comes to overcoming a low budget to make a damn good experience. Forget the subject matter for two seconds, it really is a useful film to look at in the art of mixing guerilla filmmaking with limited casting and a wonderful use of black-and-white photography to make a vibrantly disturbing feature. It is the pitch-black kind of comedy that goes hand in hand with showing a great joke on voyeuristic viewing of people in film. Is it the darkest thing you'll ever see? Experience says no, but, well, you really have to see it for yourselves in gauging the line between appalling and curious, since this is a film with a rape and then coming back to film the after-effects of participating with a serial killer. This goes hand in hand with seeing various methods of murder, whether that is a grab-bag of gunshots, murder in conversation, or, well, scaring someone to death. Poelvoorde is tasked to talk however he likes when being seen on camera for the film as much as one would expect from playing a serial killer that indulges in various opinions that revolve around red bricks, flat-out racism, or conversation with relatives. I think he really does pull a worthy performance in that strange sense of a being that one can only barely call a man, one where the soul is laid bare for all to see in basically being ordinary casual horror that does make for quite a sick joke that appeals to my sensibilities more than anything. Hell, actual serial killers probably have nothing on his odd attracting power of persuasion, and he basically is just an amateur philosopher "Everyman". The people behind him in camera (most of the time, aside from little moments to detail soundmen that die more often than drummers in This Is Spinal Tap) prove more than observers in a way that proves fascinating (again, if they were documenting a plumber, well, the message would mostly be the same about observer becoming participant, minus the little part of death). They just assume that they will get some sort of insight from a subject that goes from focus to financier, to the point where they are at one point looking at a scene (in slo-mo) they filmed of an attack on a policeman by their subject. Hell, the group encounters another documentary crew about killers, because, well, what's one good killer story without someone else doing their own rendition? So yes, with enough time, one could build a tolerance to violence to where they don't look away despite the evident shame...and to the satire of the film, "it is what it is", because no matter how much one says they want to look away from something, they really don't look away. The lines of objectivity become blurred much in the same way that we should expect from any folks that try to play the role of observer only to find themselves in the puddle. I especially like the ending, because it shows that among the illusions of trying to play observer or amateur philosopher, there is also an illusion to shatter in the idea that things will go exactly the way you planned, killer or not. I found it to be a really curious film, one that leaves its viewer to have a certain pit grow in their stomach while being a useful experiment in low-budget filmmaking and crafting a killer satire.
Overall, I give it 10 out of 10 stars.
Next Time: Sweden and Bergman.
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