A distinct film mood inhabited Belgium in the 1980s, established by a small group of auteur filmmakers who drew from the same pool of actors and a shared theme of existential (masculine) ruin. Marc Didden, a rock critic who spent a lot of time talking to Frank Zappa and The Ramones, also created several murderer-portraits: BRUSSELS BY NIGHT and ISTANBUL. The engagement with neurosis and self-loathing saves these films from being a total glorification of the 20th century creep, but they also walk the line between transgressive and just, aggressive. Brad Dourif and François Beukelaers give powerful performances that generate disgust but also curiosity, where perversion and bigotry arguably hide a more essential grotesque. Cast in these films are Belgian director Dominique Deruddere (who made a biopic of Bukowski in ’89) and actress/director Ingrid de Vos. The fascination with murderers and predators seem here, as elsewhere, a way of probing more deeply into ambient urges and almost-uncontrollable fantasies.
ISTANBUL
dir. Marc Didden
Belgium, 1985
In English, English subtitles for some Dutch/French
SATURDAY, APRIL 7 – 10 PM
TUESDAY, APRUL 10 – 7:30 PM
MONDAY, APRIL 16 – 7:30 PM
SATURDAY, APRIL 21 – 7:30 PM
ONLINE TICKETS HERE
Opening with a warm and familiar instrumental by Eric Andersen, this film presents itself as a road movie with the innocuous goal of getting to Istanbul to do “business”. It doesn’t take long for this drifter vessel to steer off course. The friendship that forms between a maniacal Martin (Brad Dourif) and his chosen pal – Willy (Dominique Deruddere) is rife with equal parts Stockholm syndrome and fascination. And Dourif is truly fascinating: a particular eccentric with a West Virginia drawl and the raw intensity of an artist or a psychopath.
The two hitch a ride with Joseph (Max in BRUSSELS BY NIGHT), a country car mechanic with designs to make the two ruffians into semi-professional kidnappers. Martin and Willy accept the gig and make off to Southern France to nap Joseph’s young daughter from her mother and new boyfriend. This task wrenchingly reveals Martin’s darker demons and the full picture of how he arrived in Belgium in the first place. Despite how fully this story goes off the rails, Didden doesn’t allow his two protagonists to fall into caricature: their complex and sometimes uncontrollable motivations plunge us into a weirder contemplation of human evil.
BRUSSELS BY NIGHT
dir. Marc Didden
Belgium, 1983
In French and Dutch with English subtitles
THURSDAY, APRIL 5 – 10 PM
TUESDAY, APRIL 10 – 10 PM
FRIDAY, APRIL 20 – 10 PM
MONDAY, APRIL 23 – 10 PM
ONLINE TICKETS HERE
Max could have shot himself. Instead he takes his anxious terror out of the house, to the train station, and wanders the Brussels streets. He’s a detestable guy, a real class-A jerk, though able to convince others that he is wracked with psychological turmoil. To Didden’s credit, Max becomes a detailed study in pathological behavior, and perhaps a cultural gesture of the inevitable and demented decay of the (white) European man. The set design of Didden’s films are reminiscent of the 1950’s, and into these settings walk new monsters of the dark 80’s.
Alice (Ingrid de Vos), tries to apply some of the sentimental charm of the past to this new ugly reality, and we watch her character fail. The “heroes” have decided to show their true selves: abstract rage, emotional stiltedness, and a reliance on bigotry when they don’t get what they want. Alice is an empath who runs a bar like a full-service therapeutic clinic, and winds up in a strange dance between Max and Adbel (Amid Chakir). She doesn’t manage her feelings well, and she and Abdel lose out for allowing Max into their lives. Max manipulates both anti-Arab sentiment and classic male domination to bad ends, like a ruinous whirlwind twisting itself into oblivion.
Marc Didden. photo credit: Geert de Taeye