iMDB Rating: 7.6
Date Released : Date: 01 Nov 2013 (USA)
Genre : Drama
Starring : Veerle Baetens, Johan Heldenbergh, Nell Cattrysse
Movie Quality : BRrip
Format : MKV
Size : 970MB
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Review :
Elise and Didier fall in love at first sight, in spite of their differences. He talks, she listens. He's a romantic atheist, she's a religious realist. When their daughter becomes seriously ill, their love is put on trial.
Total movie: 90/100 Acting: 80/100 Effects: 80/100 Book Changes: 80/100 Awesome Level: 100/100
This was the openingsfilm of the Ghent filmfestival 2012. Director Felix van Groeningen is born (1977) in the city of Ghent, and still lives there as far as I know (also has, see IMDb trivia, a heavy Ghentian local accent). Please do not construe this to be the sole reason for programming this film on the prestigious opening night, since he has an ample track record to warrant it. The announcement text as published by the festival draws our special attention to the considerable portion of bluegrass music in the film. It made me hesitate a little when booking tickets, due to my association with country&western music that I don't like very much (maybe too "American life style" for me). But my prejudice proved very wrong, and the music score offered much more than I imagined. It is not a musical, however, where the music scenes carry the story line. Instead, the music appears on logical moments and does not come in the way of the drama. An interview with the film director preceded the screening. Apart from the usual exchange of facts about how the film was made and how it relates to predecessors from the same director, I noted an important observation made by the interviewer (Patrick Duynslaegher, artistic director of the festival). He mentioned that the scene ordering was not the one he would have chosen. It proved to be a useful hint. If I had not known this before, I would have been left confused, and I certainly would have failed to appreciate the film. Now I satisfy myself with calling it "chronologically challenged", hopefully serving as a heads up for subsequent viewers. The only switch back in time shown explicitly is after the initial scene around the child's hospital bed. We see "7 years earlier" displayed announcing a backflash to the time before the parents were married. All later time switches back and forth (be prepared for many of those), have to be derived from the context. It needs some getting used to, but it works out very well, after all, to get the dramatic development across. The bare story can be told in a few lines, but doesn't do the film justice. Two very different people get to know each other by chance, find a common ground in their love for bluegrass music, the woman gets pregnant unexpectedly, they get married, and raise the child that is born. The drama starts when the child has an incurable disease at the age of six, gets hospitalized for a long time, and undergoes some fruitless therapies. Finally, stem cell therapy seemed to offer the last straw, but after a hopeful start proved nevertheless too experimental to yield a positive end result.
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