Brussels by Night

This depressing and disturbing film starts great. The protagonist is interesting, the soundtrack superb and the overall atmosphere feels desolate. But once the plot focuses on a love triangle and not so much on that interesting protagonist, the film starts to lose itself. A pity because this could have been a great social drama / film noir. At the end we get back to the reason why this man is wondering through nighttime Brussels, but the entire middle section of the film (and the finale as well) makes him a jealous member of a ménage a troi. It is a shame, a focus on his central problem would have been much more interesting.

People change, cities too. This Belgian movie gives a good picture of Brussels during the (dark) 80'. It was cold, dark and strange. I've been living in Brussels all my life, but have to be honest I do not recognize Brussels pictured in the movie anymore. Brussels changed a lot the last 10-15 years. But if anyone is interested in experiencing the atmosphere of Brussels in that time, watch the movie and be glad that things do change. The story is quite simple, it's about a few people who spent some days together, with rising tensions and feelings, which finally ends in a rather nasty situation. A psychological drama of a time I was glad I could forget it.

This is kinda pre-mental health, when mental health wasn't really on the table, and when the issue did come up it was overplayed to some extreme. The lead character is showing pretty accurate signs you would expect to see in his behaviour patterns.

Unlike other reviewers, the end threw me. To be honest I seen it in him all along, but you just kind of ignore it, and pretend that element of his personality isn't there. The violent and suicidal tendencies etc, but when I realised what he had done I was still shocked. The shock is really because, despite him being a unlikeable character, this all comes out of left field at the end of the movie. Its the hiding in plain sight sort of thing. You knew the signs were there, but you were too naïve to realise it. As a viewer you can't help but to feel fooled, in a manner of speaking.

It reminded me a bit of British director Mike Leighs movie Naked in some respects, which came out 10 years later to much acclaim.

Brussels by Night, starts with a man, sitting upright in his bed, putting a gun in his mouth. He pulls the trigger but nothing happens. This must be one of the most impressive beginnings of a Belgian movie I've ever seen if you ask me. Immediately you know this will be a dark, dramatic movie.

The movie isn't bad, but it's not as convincing and powerful as I hoped it would be at the beginning. From time to time much interesting isn't happening, making me lose almost all interest in the movie. In fact, all the movie shows is a man wandering around in Brussels, meeting some people, talking, drinking and trying to phone someone... Only at the end you'll fully understand why he acts so strange during the entire story, who he is actually calling and why no-one picks up the phone. What I liked best about the movie is the way it shows Brussels in the eighties. It's a concrete desert, full of desperation and loneliness, where not much is happening...

The images in combination with the melancholic sound track (The only problem for the people who are not from here is that it is sung in French and Dutch, so impossible to understand for the most of you), make sure this movie is rather depressing, which as you'll see fits the subject perfectly. Even though the movie had its moments it wasn't a complete success. I give it a 6/10.

Borderline brilliant, with witty genius, a cult-worthy near-masterpiece in first 60% of film ... 'Brussels by Night' is then sadly ruined by a devastatingly flawed screenplay ending, introducing some totally un-needed themes of gross violence in a cheap, foolish attempt to be a 'profound and important film'.

But the film in its early parts - about 4 troubled characters in Belgium in the early 1980s - is really extraordinary in many ways, with a very light sophisticated touch. Great film-work and use of music, shows how a smart European on a low-budget can totally outclass Hollywood - for at least part of a film.

Not just a great insight into modern secular European life in 'borderland' regions - really not all that different in Europe today - 'Brussels by Night' initially has a story of marginal and seedy urban characters, who despite some petty failings and 'crime', are not that different from common people in general. The film's brilliance is in a Marcel-Proust-like ability to fascinate us with the meaning of small incidents, in life and in sexual relationships. It is totally compelling viewing, up to a point beyond the first half of the film.

If the film had stayed in that sphere, it might have become one of the great cult classics of European cinema verité, life 'as it really is' on the European streets.

The switch back and forth from Dutch to French, the two main characters being bi-lingual (with a little use of English too), are a nice window into European life, where even uneducated, edgy people speak several languages. This is authentic Brussels (officially bi-lingual) and Belgium (60% Dutch-speaking, the rest mostly French-speaking, including most of Brussels).

But the violent themes that get introduced toward the end, are so utterly soiling, that they make you forget how good the movie was in the early parts. Not that it needed a 'happy' ending, but just some more thought as to what to do with the various troubled people in Brussels who so fascinate the viewer ... characters who deserved better than pointlessly shocking, disconnected conclusion scenes.

The film just needed to stay on its early level, a brilliant movie about the small, hugely intriguing things that can compose real life, versus being transformed un-necessarily into a gratuitous video presentation of psychopathic behaviour and horror. Though the violence is in part suggested rather than shown, it is a betrayal of the viewer's initial eager enjoyment of a genius film about the small but vivid components of petty lives.

Hesitate to recommend it, because of the way 'Brussels by Night' disturbs at the end ... I am left with a sense of tragedy, both to see a semi-genius film collapse so disgustingly before its conclusion ... and to realise that a possibly great young European director, had likely damaged his future prospects, by the cheap, awful ending to his brilliantly-begun 'Brussels by Night'.