Film review: The Broken Circle Breakdown

Newsroom 14/03/2014 | 08:18

Bluegrass and broken hearts drive this Belgian tear-jerker, which doesn’t so much tug at your heartstrings as throttle you into weeping submission with them. Take tissues. It is a story of love and loss, how the latter erodes the former when a terrible event befalls a freespirited couple. It changes not only the characters, but the cinematography.

While the early days of romance are bathed in golden light, later scenes of pain and discord are shot in a harsh, “morning-after” grey. The stylistic demarcation is required because the action does not unfold chronologically, but jumps back and forth, so scenes of shock and suffering might be followed by the honeymoon period. It is a powerful juxtaposition of now and then, joy and despair.

Although we’re in Ghent, not Hollywood, a lot about this movie is mainstream filmmaking. Those kids got soul, man! We know because Didier (Johan Heldenbergh) is a wannabe cowboy and beardy bluegrass musician and Elise (Veerle Baetens) is an inked-up bohemian tattoo artist. But pre-tragedy, Didier and Elise are a little bit too cute to be plausible. In its happy scenes, the movie makes you want to abandon your career and become a Belgian bluegrass musician, and it’s not often you say that.

Of course, this makes it all the more affecting when tragedy strikes. And director Felix Van Groeningen doesn’t spare his viewers: Didier and Elise suffer and so will you. I told you to take tissues. There’s a bit of politics and religion in the mix, but anyone sniffing around the foreign-language Oscar nominees (it lost out to The Great Beauty) is likely to be firmly on board with the message. Let’s just say, The Broken Circle Breakdown is probably not going to make the Bush family’s Netflix wish list.

But the main break from the sorrow is the music. As with Inside Llewyn Davis, the protagonist’s job as an instrumentalist and singer is the pretext for weaving the plot around frequent musical interludes. This is sometimes stretched beyond credulity: would a Belgian hospital really permit a fivepiece band to perform on its intensive care ward? But it’s sweet relief that those irresistible songs are there to raise our spirits before they are crushed again by the drama of this tender, moving and very effective story.

Director: Felix Van Groeningen
Starring: Johan Heldenbergh, Veerle Baetens
On at: NCRR, Cinema Elvira Popescu

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