What I would call a good-natured Belgian version of "Festen" is a remarkable psycho drama, directed and written by a young unknown movie maker named Chris Vander Stappen. It was released in France in the middle of August 2001 and as a result very few people saw it, which is a pity as the film is effective, at the same time satiric and gripping. It also boasts a dream cast featuring the excellent Hélène Vincent as the close-minded mother who keeps twisting the reality to make it fit into her own vision of things, Tsilla Chelton (cast against type if you consider her iconic "Tatie Danielle") interpreting the sweet granny who has missed out on the opportunities of life, Mimie Mathie (also cast against type compared to her TV hit series "Joséphine, ange gardien") playing the embittered dwarf sister and too rarely seen but always reliable Claude Crahay embodying with shrewdness the humorous but weak father. The "star" of the film is Marie Bunel, radiant and discreetly beautiful. She IS rather than interprets this "ugly duckling" putting her feet in it.
I have never forgotten sequences such as the routine breakfast replicated identically morning after morning or the wonderful one in which Mamie Léa (Chelton) fed up with being neglected, pretends to die falling head first into the Mother's Day cake. And one of the best lines I have ever heard in a film is uttered by the same Léa after having waited in vain for the coming of her former fiancé :"Well, it's about time to grow old!"
If you ever have the opportunity to came across this great overlooked picture don't miss it. You won't regret it.
I have never forgotten sequences such as the routine breakfast replicated identically morning after morning or the wonderful one in which Mamie Léa (Chelton) fed up with being neglected, pretends to die falling head first into the Mother's Day cake. And one of the best lines I have ever heard in a film is uttered by the same Léa after having waited in vain for the coming of her former fiancé :"Well, it's about time to grow old!"
If you ever have the opportunity to came across this great overlooked picture don't miss it. You won't regret it.