Camping Cosmos

This second opus of "The Sex life of the Belgians" is one of the most entertaining piece Bucquoy delivered so far. In an almost mainstream colorful setup, the director takes us deep into shameless Belgian trailer park culture. Summer camp sized, the belgo-bucquoy society including its regular nefarious revolutionary characters and adult-fake Tintin is quiet enjoyable. Featuring a couple of neat local celebrities such as Arno or Noel Godin (totally insane as usual), and dead but cult figure, the hyper breasted Lolo Ferrari.

The story tells us the relation between a father who works as a cultural entertainer in a camping and his daughter who comes back after she was kidnaped, and the adventures of the habitants of the camping who all have a peculiar sex-life. The woman of the camping owner, miss Vandeputte (Lolo Ferrari), wants to be loved and she tries to start a relationship with some guys of the camping: the radio-operator, the postman, a man disguised as the hero of the comics "Tintin". Nobody is interested in an life-interview with a famous writer. The entertainer wants to attract people to a boxing-match, a song contest, a beauty contest, but this is not what the ministry of culture wants. He finds happiness with his daughter who supports him. The story ends bad for miss Vandeputte: Lolo is wrapped by her husband like a mummy and thrown into the sea. The camping is visited by the police and everybody leaves the camping in a feeling of despair. I liked the movie because it shows something about my country, but it is universal and people from other countries will also recognize people of their own country in this movie.

This movie ends a first part of the Jan Bucquoy's cinematographic career. Camping Cosmos is in fact the second and the last traditional movie directed by the Belgian director, chief of the "irregulars" Belgian directors. Traditional means spectacular, filmed with 35mm camera, with a technical crew, based on a film script and with a traditional production and distribution system. T hat is the second production of the period called by Bucquoy himself of "temporary integration" in the classical movie system. Bucquoy makes all the possible to provoke the laughter, that's why Camping Cosmos is a very funny comedy, full of citations of the surrealist and "situationnist" culture, full of amazing situations. Also the happy end takes place in this movie! How make a "popular" and intellectual movie? How talk about the Belgian culture to the Belgians? How talk about revolution in early eighties? That's the challenge of Bucquoy who keep on tailing the adventures of his favourite character: Jan Bucquoy. The protagonist of his first movie. Adult and divorced he is now the cultural director of a camping on the Belgian coast trying to learn to the holidaymakers the principal arguments of his counterculture. His daughter's arrival in the camping give him once again the chance to think about his life and dreams. A summer on the Belgian coast, a trip in the Belgian culture. An original portrait of many different universal characters. Really funny.

This movie surprises me every time I look at it. It is hard to believe that Lolo Ferrari is dead because in the movie she is a great actress and she is more than a Barbie-doll. As a Belgian I am able to recognize some of the characters but I think they are universal. The postman with his bag with the initials C.C.C.P. is a secretive person: does he make love with Miss Vandeputte (Lolo Ferrari)? The beach-master (Arno) who is a homosexual, the autistic painter (Herman Brusselmans) who puts slogans on the caravans like: "This is not a work of art", the cyclist who adores Eddy Merckx, the radio-operator (Claude Semalle), the famous writer Piere Mertens (pie-thrower Noël Godin) who cannot dress up his armchair on the sand at the beach, are such funny characters that you must laugh with them. The boxing-match is realistic with a real challenger of Muhamed Alli and it is one of the big moments in the movie. The beauty-contest reveals something about people on holiday because they prefer watching beautiful girls rather than a play by Bertold Brecht. Then there are the returning Belgian items like frites, beer and football. The intellectuals who try to bring the working class near to culture and literature must admit their failure. But the representative of the Belgian Ministry of Culture (Jan Bucquoy) finds satisfaction in the fact that his daughter who was kidnapped and who came back on the caravan park, admires him for his determination.

Camping Cosmos is the surrealist belgian movie of the last ten years. Jan Bucquoy, the spiritual son of the great surrealist Marcel mariën, shows us how strange the belgians can be. Surrealism seems to be the belgian way of life. Bucquoy shows us a large range of people from all horizons, having all their own ambitions and finding all the most unexpected ways to realize their dreams In the camp we meet pie-thrower Le Gloupier, Tintin with his dog working now as a radio-animator,Lolo Ferrari who cannot find the real love: all this shown in a holliday atmosphere with the beach and tourists . All is told with a lot of sensibility, some times a little vulgarity, but if you read between the lines you'll laugh about it and appreciate it at its best.