June 12There are certain films that call out for new definitions... words even... Films like 'Pink Flamingos' or 'Mullholand Drive'. Screening in the festival's 'Provocateur' section was Koen Mortier's Belgian debut 'Ex-Drummer' and "Eye-Fuck" is the first idiomatic phrase I came up with when trying to describe it. Yes, it hurt and I actually looked away. Now, people who know me, know perfectly well that there's practically nothing cinematic out there that can outgross my jaded viewing sensibilities. I'm perfectly content to eat pop-corn while watching 'Bad Taste' and 'Salo'. It's not that 'Ex-Drummer' is more visually vulgar, gory or disgusting than these films. Maybe it's the terrifying reality of the characters that cuts so close to the bone. However ludicrous the situation somehow I felt that people like the ones featured in this film pass me by everyday on the street. What kind of people you may ask? A trio of guitarists with serious handicaps - one is deaf (and a wife-basher), the second has a dead arm that has gone numb from masturbating (has a bald mother and a psychotic father) and a third one is so angry he walks on the ceiling (and hates women to the point of wanting to slaughter them). The forth one is the drummer - a famous and privileged writer who is approached by the three invalids to help complete a band that is going to play only once at a local rock competition. The writer (his sole handicap being the fact that he can't play the drums) agrees just to be able to observe the depraved lives these disparate characters lead.
Now, in an American comedy, we'd follow this bunch of losers through trials and tribulations until the eventual triumphant conclusion (they play wonderfully, win a prize, get the girl, get laid, get a contract or understand the value of friendship or whatever). But people do things differently in Belgium. First of all, the losers can play - and really well at that. Second of all - nobody seems to really give a shit about the prize. Thirdly - there's not a single good-looking person in sight. Hollywoodn't as the ad says. The film is narrated by the writer/drummer whose dry, lordly voiceover has a Virgilian chill to it as he takes us through the hellish-Flemish uber-camp of self-destructive nuclear family wasteland. In fact, the tapestry here is so convoluted that at times it's difficult to pin-point what exactly the director is aiming his guns at. Considering the horrifyingly bleak hilarity of the film's coda, my guess would be that 'Ex-Drummer' is a critique of society's destructive strive towards 'normality' at all costs - an achievement of an impossible equilibrium if you like. Because in the end, the most disturbed character is really the figure of the writer whose Nietzschean disregard for humanity eclipses all the other handicaps on display put together. But then what does a meter-long dick and a middle-aged bald woman have to do with all that? I'm still trying to figure... The problem with this film is that it tries to do and to be so many things at once. I could call it bluff on a whole deck of mixed themes and metaphors but still not win the hand, so in the end I decided that Koen Mortier's obvious tactic of 'hit'em hard, ask questions later' is a clever choice - now I absolutely must watch this film again. Visually, Belgian (of the Flemish side) films always tend to be on the dour - 'it really sucks to be in Belgium' - side. And this is no different, but the director, who I repeat is an exceedingly clever bloke, uses the 'toilet bowl' aesthetic to foreground the extreme aspects of his story into semi-documentary type visual texture which makes you totally not blink twice when you see a man walk on a ceiling or you suddenly find yourself in an overly enlarged vagina. Add to it some real on screen sex, the surreally violent ending and you get the idea. To say that I look forward to Mortier's follow-up film would be a complete understatement.
The second film of the day I had already seen previously, so deviously I decided to include it as part of my festival quota.
'Witnesses' is Andre Techine's typically cool look at the terrifying spread of AIDS in 1980s. Featuring the director's wide-eyed muse - Emanuelle Beart - as a bohemian writer of children's books, the film is a story about a group of people that are profoundly changed by the disease. Sarah (Beart) and her policeman husband (Sami Bouajilla) have a happy open-marriage arrangement which is somewhat thrown off balance when they have a child. When their closest friend a gay doctor (Michel Blanc) falls in love with a precocious youth named Manu and brings him along to one of their country gatherings, things become even more complicated as attraction develops between all the wrong people. Manu is attractive and is desired by everyone and he takes full advantage of it. Soon, long drives out for 'flying lessons' with Sarah's husband follow. But this is not the Paris of the 20s and a very different kind of war shutters the precocious bonhomie of these hedonistic times. Manu comes down with AIDS, which painfully tests every one's allegiances and motives.
I usually enjoy Techine's dry, laconic storytelling and his multi-stranded narratives that always seem to center on a cultural microcosm rather than just on a single individual. And this is no exception. The uniformly excellent cast deliver stunningly restrained, unsentimental performances and it is a testament to director's mastery that we come to understand and care for all his flawed characters. Like Almodovar, Techine refuses to pass judgement and his typically French sense of subtle irony reinforces the inherent complexities in human relationships never going for definitive and facile statements. The achievement of this film is that it is anything but message driven. We forget to moralise while watching how these people desperately try to clutch on to their dignity and forge ahead with life. The rich shading of interactions, emotions, the fluidity of relationships and emotions is what makes 'Witnesses' such a beautiful testament on the human spirit.
It does seem that Techine himself profoundly changed after the 80s. The magnificent exuberance of his early cinema-du-look films such as 'Barrocco' with their electrifying stylistic gusto has given way to distinctly plainer and paired-back mise-en-scene. He obviously doesn't think of life anymore as a romantic romp through technicolour. Who can blame him?
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