Toto le héros - Un eroe di fine millennio

This movie is sheer visual poetry. Although it is in subtitles and I don't speak a lick of French, I found myself not needing to read the subtitles as the visuals told the entire story. This is rather impressive, as the story is very complicated. It tells the tale of one man's life by interweaving four different elements of his life: Childhood, Middle-Age, Old-Age, and a Film Noir Fantasy World. To give it even more of a chance of being confusing, these elements are not shown chronologically. However, "Toto..." is not confusing at all. It pulls off this complicated plot beautifully. This movie truly is a Modern Day Classic!! DVD? When? Criterion Edition!

Ask me what time it is. Very very very strange and very entertaining bit of European cinema from Wacko Jaco Van Dormael, a former circus clown turned director. This film about fate, love, and childhood fantasies gone awry is very hard to describe. Imagine a kids film directed by Lars Von Trier, add a dash of "Amelie," a scent of "Donnie Darko," a sprinkle of Lynchian strangeness, and a good heaping of Terry Gilliam inspired wackiness, place in a blender, then travel back in time (as this movie came long before and probably inspired "Amelie" and "Donnie Darko") and voilà, you'll have "Toto." Sometimes heartbreaking, sometimes funny (everybody seems to love those dancing tulips), sometimes weird, always captivating, this is a film for people who enjoy non-linear and creative story-telling. Also, that much talked about floating plastic bag stuff from "American Beauty" is taken straight from this film's unforgettable final scenes. Dormael seemed to have so much good stuff going on in this film, it's ashame he's only made one film since this, as any film buff who watches it will no doubt imagine a few more great films being pulled out of Dormael's magician's hat.

A hearty recommendation for this film, which deftly kaleidoscopes time. Three actors portray one life at various age stages, through them we see the innocence of childhood and the guilt of autumn years are two sides of the same coign of vantage.

The creative imagination of the protagonist (and the director) are well framed...and it was reassuring that some of the magic that our hero, Thomas, felt as a child stays with him throughout his life, and this film.

Minor caveats for people who

1) dislike non-linear time in a film

2) voice-over narration

But the distinct actors/times make #1 no problem here, better yet the dissolves between them are often lyrical...and I think more accurate to how we remember our time in this world.

Reaffirmed my belief of the power in charged details (shoes in a closet, a pop tune, candy wrappers) and my faith in the beautiful complexity of a simple life.

The first movie from Belgium director Jaco Van Dormael is pure magic. It's what cinema should always be.

I've just seen the movie, for the third time, on TV past midnight yesterday and I couldn't close my eyes. Why ? Because Van Dormael knows how to tell a story. Also, you become very attached to all the character, bad and good one.

The cinematography give you the impression that you are dreaming. The camera is so light and the colors are so bright so you know that the imagination of Thomas, the "Toto" from the title, is working very hard to remember exactly what happened in his childhood.

If you love a good story with a very interesting plot, this is the one.

Jaco Van Dormael conjures up (he was a magician and a clown) one of those films that because of their formal beauty and intelligent content deserve to be seen more often but are not. The film is full of internal echoes, images that resurface under different contexts, and make you rethink them again and again (dare I say like in Citizen Kane?). As if that were not enough, there are many other resonances to genres and specific films that will make film buffs laugh with excitement: quotations to gangster films, to Hitchcock, to Bunuel, etc. are all there to be discovered and enjoyed. Alan Moore would be smiling at the construction of this beautiful crystal web that is the narrative of this film. See it and rejoice...