Hombres complicados

Belgian cinema has never been very popular and that's a shame. I admit that most of the movies made over here aren't worth much, but sometimes you'll get a little gem like Hombres Complicados.

It's the story of two completely different brothers. Bruno is a loser who works for the customs, never does anything wrong or exciting in his life, married and always faithful to his wife. Roger is the complete opposite of him. Roger cheats on his wife, never sees his kid and tries to make some extra money with all kind of criminal activities. Now their mother died and they meet each other again for the first time in years. Because Roger has a lot of debts and some criminals will kill him if he doesn't pay, he tries to convince his brother to help him by helping the criminals, closing an eye when their shipments pass at the customs...

Hombres Complicados has been shot in a very gritty style. At first you think it's only because of the lack of a big budget, but as the movie progresses, the grittiness adds an extra touch to the story. Liège is an obscure, rather dirty city, where criminals thrive, but thanks to the way the movie was shot, the city seems even more repelling and darker than it really is (and I know the city, I used to work there).

It's too bad that this movie never got much attention. Perhaps that is because of the very dark humor and, for our movies, not so obvious content. Personally I like the movie a lot because it is so dark and funny. I give it an 8/10.

This is the most Belgian movie I've ever seen. Two Dutch-speaking brothers with their families travel to the south of Belgium for a holiday after their mother died. Bruno (Josse De Pauw) is a settled man who likes his job, wife, children etc. His brother Roger (Dirk Roofthooft) is the exact opposite of Bruno. He always wants more: money, a nicer looking wife, more sex, more power, being smarter etc. Roger is in some problems, having a large debt with some obscure people in Liège and wants Bruno to help him out.

Deruddere made this movie between some of his larger projects (Suite 16 and Iedereen beroemd) and it wasn't a big success. It also wasn't a high budget movie but not much Belgian movies are made with very large budgets (except when they handle about people like father Damian). It has been on television a couple of times and I enjoyed it very much. Not everybody will though because the humour is quite dark. It's a portrait of the way Belgians live nowadays (which is strange but still quite similar to our neighbouring countries). But the best thing about this movie is the soundtrack composed by Arno (Hintjens) which is superb!