Far from Perfect, Far from Terrible

Did you people see the same film I saw?

Clever and entertaining enough to recommend even to members of the 1%

It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

Both Matty and Johnny have been hurt by love. She is a 41 year old mother whose husband while going through midlife crisis leaves her for his 22 year old student and still can't decide who he wants to stay with. Johnny's big love in life couldn't live with him going to work trips and cheated on him. They both are angry with the situation. And when they collide at a parking their anger comes out.But it also connects them and they slowly develop a relationship as they get to know each other.The movie is a romantic comedy. But not a typical one as we see made in Hollywood. It is about working class people who don't look like models. When we first see them, they don't seem that attractive. But the more we get to know them the more attractive they become. We get to love them with all their imperfections and wish them all the best. The movie also doesn't go into a stereotypical happy ending. The ending is actually more ambiguous. We don't now if Matty and Johnny will have a long happily ever after relationship. And yet it leaves us happy. The movie seems more to be about the transformation of Matty. At first we see her walking through the supermarket, all down with fuzzy hair. She is depressed and wants her husband who treated her as he did to come back. At the end she is walking through the street, fresh and with her head high and happy. She doesn't want Werner back. She doesn't need him, she got her life back.Very good acting as well by all of the actors, including the children. Vera is greatly done, not a typical movie teenager who is a pain in life, but an interesting, thoughtful young adolescent.

As Matty is backing her car out of her parking spot of a supermarket, she hears the ominous sign of a collision. A big truck driven by Johnny, has come in her way, damaging her trunk's door. No serious damage was inflicted on the truck. Matty, furiously maintains Johnny is the culprit by hitting her, he, on the other hand, feels it is her fault by not looking where she was going. The two start a shouting match that clearly does not go anywhere until the police arrive to seize the situation. Johnny, evidently, is well known to the cops.To her complete surprise, Matty watches the following morning the arrival of Johnny from her balcony. He has come armed with tools to repair the damage. She is furious, Matty did not expect this, nor did she call him. Johnny fixes the damage so it can close properly. Matty is somewhat flattered about Johnny's good intentions for making good out of their terrible ordeal. Matty offers lunch to Johnny. Matty has three children. Vera, a teen ager, Fien, a girl of about twelve, and Peter, who is the younger. Matty is separated from Werner, her husband, a music teacher who left her for a younger woman. Werner and Matty have remained in somewhat civil terms. She works at a post office branch, a boring job which helps her support her family, since there is no indication Werner contributes much to his children. The arrival of Johnny proves to be a godsend for Matty, who suddenly sees in Johnny a man that shows some interest in her, even though she is about ten years older than him. Johnny, who travels to Italy quite often, loves romance. Finding a kind soul in Matty, he falls deeply for her. Matty, who is at first reluctant to give in, is charmed by the good natured Johnny. What Matty does not know is the fact that Johnny had problems with the law because his heavy drinking and fighting, something he declares he has left behind. Now sober, he realizes this is the opportunity to get on with his life. Matty has other problems to deal with, but she too has fallen in love with the man.A romantic comedy from Belgium was a surprise when it turned up on a cable channel recently. Directed by Christophe Van Rompaey, the film rings true because one can identify with the people in the story. Matty is an earthy no-nonsense woman who has been abandoned by a man that did not deserve her. She accept her daughter Vera's coming out as a lesbian without hysterics. The arrival of Johnny into her boring life awakens her from her resignation to go it alone. Johnny is charmed by a woman who can tell him off without getting upset about it. The film works because of the wonderful performances of the two principals. Barbara Sarafian is a welcome presence in any film she graces with her presence. She is reluctant to acknowledge the happiness that falls into her lap, Jurgen Delnaet matches his co-star in surprising ways. Both make their characters credible.

Moscow, Belgium starts out as an earnest and entertaining romance about a 41 year old mother of three and a 29 year old truck driver. So very much of the film is new, fresh, and funny. Too bad that it's sunk in the final 30 minutes by a false and intrusive theme about the oldest daughter suddenly being lesbian. This was obvious sucker-bait aimed at the liberal reviewers who usually give automatic positive reviews to any gay-themed film. Need one name names? Just as a cigarette butt or roach intrudes on a dinner plate, spoiling the remainder of the dinner, but also spoiling the portion already consumed, this amounts to a rude and shallow intrusion on the viewer's goodwill. When the mother gets the news that her daughter's boyfriend is "Iris" this very emotional woman responds not-at-all. Upon meeting Iris, we find, of course, that Iris is the nicest and most noble lesbian you'd ever want to meet -- planning a career of counseling terminally ill patients. There's more: The mother would never have let "a boy" sleep with her 16 year old daughter in their apartment, but since Iris is gay, her sleep-over is just fine.People are free to accept or reject Brokeback Mountain et cetera. That's fine, since they're up front about the gay theme. But when they take care to conceal it till you buy your ticket; well that's just not nice.

I loved this movie! It's amusing, touching, warm, sweet and salty and an exercise in great acting. Funny, but this the second movie I've watched recently that's set in Belgium (the other was 'In Bruges'). The nation must be striving to throw off its dull image and present a new face to the world. Moscow Belgium certainly overturns the concept that dysfunctional families are confined to North America. Here we have Eurodisfunction. Moscow (strictly Moscou) is the name of the suburb the protagonists inhabit, which as far as I can see is between Gent and the North Sea coast. It is glimpsed very briefly on the destination board on the front of a bus. This seemed to cause confusion amongst our audience and I overheard several muttered conversations as I left the theatre as to what on earth Russia had to do with it? So possibly the movie name has lost something in translation? It translates better as Collision in Moscou. Barbara Sarafian plays Matty, a rather dowdy, phlegmatic, forty-something mother of three whose art teacher husband Werner has left her for one of his students some five and a half months before. She works in a post office, takes care of the kids and – when we meet her first – is trudging half heartedly around the local megastore buying groceries. Matty is more dead than alive. Exiting the car park, she reverses into the truck of Johnny (Jurgen Delnaet) a red haired, alcoholic but quite cute truck driver some ten years her junior, and a sharp exchange of views ensues about fault and blame, which ends abruptly with the arrival of the traffic police, called by Matty. It seems Johnny has a record. The next day he turns up at her apartment to fix her damaged trunk and he asks her out for a drink. Johnny is intrigued by Matty, but she is less than enamoured of him. All she wants – she thinks – is her old life back; her husband home, her kids behaving and everything ordered and where it should be. Her coworker at the post office has assured her that sexual passion only lasts six months, so Werner will be back soon. But Johnny is persistent and Werner is flaky. Whereas Werner's new girlfriend phones him at awkward times, interrupting all his attempts to converse with his wife, Johnny is amusing and unequivocal about his desire to get Matty into his bed – or at least into the cab of his truck where he has a bunk. Matty can't quite believe she's doing this but is torn between the quiet life of a known but cheating husband and the roller coaster ride of a relationship with marginally criminal but laddishly attractive Johnny.Then she discovers that Johnny put his ex wife in hospital and all bets are off. Can someone who has done prison time for hitting his last woman be trusted to have changed? Even if he does bond with her son at an air show and bring her Italian designer shoes from his road trips and make her feel sexier than she's felt in years. Lurking in the background of all of this domestic drama are Matty and Werner's three bright children, nerdy Peter who is into airplanes, Fien who tells everyone's fortune with a deck of tarot cards and old-for-her-years Vera, who at sixteen watches and learns from the complicated mess the supposed adults are making of their sex lives. The intimate and often dull details of domestic life are lovingly filmed; Matty's obsession for feeding them blood sausage to build up pale Peter's health, the hours spent watching her laundry tumble around at the laundromat, Johnny sitting obediently at the dinner table like a slightly older version of her kids while she serves up family dinner. In one delicious scene, Johnny, Werner, Matty, the kids – everyone – share a meal while sniping at each other politely over the dinner plates and then in the midst of this domestic bliss, Vera introduces her girlfriend. She's decided life will be simpler if she is gay. Vera is played by Anemone Valcke who is both absolutely gorgeous and a very good young actress and I expect to see much, much more of her in future. The script is perfect, the dialogue real – even in subtitles – and the direction quite understated. There are subtle under tones of a fading European class system at work here too, with teacher Werner obviously thinking Johnny – as a mere truck driver whose father was a railway worker – is intellectually his inferior. You get the feeling that Werner thinks his wife is a bit déclassé too, but of course he can hardly complain about her sleeping with Johnny when he is now bedding a student. I always think a 'foreign language' movie works really well when the acting is so good that you are barely aware that you are reading subtitles. There is no attempt to overstate the humour and force feed it to the audience, rather we absorb the irony and drama of the situation while Matty weighs up the potential fun and excitement of a new life with slightly dodgy but adoring Johnny against the known status quo of getting back together with pretentious Werner. Great movie of human foibles and middle aged love. Go see.