D'Ardennen

Belgian cinema has gotten more and more ambitious in this past decade, and that newfound self esteem certainly paved the way for something like "D'Ardennen". This is the kind of movie that takes guts to make, particularly when you're working on a shoestring budget. It starts of very slowly, but you really need the meandering (okay...boring) first act to appreciate what follows. Director Robin Pront gradually makes his characters more insane as the movie progresses, and plays with your expectations beautifully. The two brothers this movie revolves around seem like small time crooks, dumb guys who are down on their luck but good at heart. When you're proved wrong, it hits you like a sledgehammer. In the end, you're treated to one of the most messed- up plot twists I've seen in years. Nobody left that theatre smiling, nobody was even talking. If you can achieve that, you've written a pretty amazing and gripping ending. "D'Ardennen" is occasionally marketed as a cross between the Dardenne brothers and Tarantino, which is incredibly inaccurate: actually it's not like anything else I've ever seen, and just for that it deserves a lot of credit.

"Kenny" (Kevin Janssens) and brother "Dave" (Jeroen Perceval) are involved in an abortive burglary that sees the latter escape leaving the former to spend the next four years in jail. When he is released, the siblings are reunited with their mother and for a while, bygones seem to be bygones with "Kenny" even seeming to forgive his ex "Sylvie" (Veerle Baetens) who now has a child and who has also taken up a job pole-dancing for a Moroccan night-club owner. It's round about now that we start to see some cracks appear in the brotherly relationship. "Kenny" finds out who the father of the child is, loses his temper, then things are exacerbated by some thugs who visit their workplace and one of those is accidentally killed. Unsurprisingly, they get fired and then have to take the corpse to the remote rural home of ex-cellmate "Stef" (Jan Bijvoet) and his pal "Joyce" (Sam Louwyck). Ostensibly they are just going to get shot of the body, but their relationship only gets worse and "Dave" begins to wonder if he can, actually, trust his brother. Robin Pront does try to mix up the narrative a bit, it's gritty and dark at times and I thought Janssens made a decent fist of his "Kenny" character. The rest of the film, though, isn't really up to much. The dialogue is strained and a bit contrived, the direction style staccato and it really falls to the eccentricities of "Stef" and "Joyce" to breath a little quirkiness into what is otherwise all just a bit of a dreary denouement. I didn't hate it, but I doubt I'd watch it again.

Rumours were out that this was a brutal flick. Have seen it I can say that I can understand that some will have difficulty with the fight scene's. It's brutal but it never becomes gory or messy. But still this is a flick that rises above the mediocre Belgian flicks.

Even as it is spoken in the Antwerp language this time it didn't bother me because the two brothers were low life so it's normal that they can't talk decent. The acting from Kevin Janssens (Kenneth) is really excellent, to say the least, all characters were perfectly type cast and all acting is high standard.

People can't be changed and that's what this flick shows with a twist at the end. A must see.

Gore 0,5/5 Nudity 0,5/5 Effects 3/5 Story 3/5 Comedy 0/5

"The Ardennes" (2015 release from Belgium; 96 min.) brings the story of brothers Dave and Kenny. As the movie opens, Dave is seen scrambling and driving off madly with a woman, while Kenny is not so lucky, and gets arrested. In a quick montage, Kenny is sentenced to 7 years in jail, his girlfriend Sylvie attends AA/NA meetings and is now 2 years clean, and Dave is working at a carwash. Then after 4 years, Kenny is released, and Dave picks him up. Kenny is disappointed that Sylvie isn't there to meet him, but we in the meantime know that Sylvie is now with Dave, and pregnant (all unbeknownst to Kenny). At his mom's urging, Dave is able to get Kenny a job at the car wash. Will Kenny find out about Dave and Sylvie? Will Kenny remain on the straight-and-narrow? At this point we are a good 10 min. into the movie but to tell you more pf the plot would spoil your viewing experience, you'll just have to see for yourself how it all plays out.

Couple of comments: in the initial opening credits, the movie is announced as "Belgian cinema from Flanders" (which is the Dutch-speaking part of Belgium). In fact, the movie is set in and around Antwerp, my original home town, and all of the characters speak with a pronounced Antwerp dialect accent. Writer-director Robin Pront previously was the producer of the Oscar-nominated "Bullhead". Here he explores another crime drama, and along with it a complicated relationship between 2 brothers. The movie is highly stylish in both its photography and camera angles, adding to the overall sense of dread that something very bad may be going down. Veerle Batens as Sylvie delivers yet another top-notch performance, as does Jeroen perceval as Dave. But the intense performance of Kevin Janssens as the unstable Kenny is what really lifts this movie. Last but certainly not least, there is an outstanding electronic score, courtesy of Flemish composer Hendrik Willemyns, whom I had never heard of before. Bottom line, this is a dark crime drama which I ended up enjoying a lot more than I expected. Incidentally, this was Belgium's official entry for the 2017 Best Foreign Language Movie Oscar (it was not nominated).

While "The Ardennes" played at a number of film festivals (it premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival) and was officially released in the US in early 2017, it really wasn't until Film Movement released it as part of its Movie of the Month releases that this gained a wider audience. This is how I finally was able to see it. So glad I did (and not just because I originally hail from Belgium). If you are in the mood for a dark crime drama, I'd readily recommend you check this out and draw your own conclusion. I think you will be quite pleased. "The Ardennes" is a WINNER.

As a Belgian we might have different opinions about this movie. I thought it was a well made movie with a good story. But most of it's charm is that is raw, straight out of life, because of the use of the dialect language. It's in Flemish, more specifically in the Antwerp dialect. In Belgium almost every town has it's own dialect and for some it is difficult to understand but the dialect from Antwerp is one of those everybody understands in Belgium. Not like the dialect from East or West Flanders that only people from there understand. So I can get that if you don't speak or understand those dialects that the movie looses a bit of it's value. Even though I thought, seeing the budget that is quite high for a Belgian production, the movie has a good story with good actors and a couple of surprising twists. To me it is with Bull Head one of the better Belgian movies from the last decade.