Loft

In Flanders, there has been such a huge hype about this movie that it's almost impossible for director Erik Van Looy to live up to the expectations. If we are to believe everything that has been told about it, this is supposed to be the best movie ever made in Flanders, and a Hollywood remake would only be a matter of time.

Let's face it: Loft is a run-of-the-mill thriller. Not bad, but not excellent. It looks very stylish, and that is perhaps also the problem: apart from style, there is not much else. The whodunit-story is OK, but twists and turns just a little bit too much for my taste. The acting is all right, but not world-class. The cinematography is good, but not imaginative. The characters are flat - we don't know why they do what they do.

The movie lacks a little bit extra that could have made it really good. There is no theme, no emotion, no message. There are no scenes that stand out. Not one single scene makes you cry, shiver or laugh. That's OK - you can't expect every movie to do that. Loft is good, but not great.

Storytelling is an art.

If you have a decent story to tell, there's a couple of tools one can use to involve the audience in this modern crime-mystery. The creators have carefully made use of a well proportioned amount of all sort of goodies at their disposal to make the movie captivating. It stings your interest, it bites your brainwaves and in a completely natural way it wakes up the hidden private detective in the spectators mind.

You're no longer watching the movie, you are in it yourself.

"Loft" is a well build-up whodunit-flick, both worth your money & your time.

Although it's still relatively recent, it's actually a huge disgrace that it took me until now to finally watch and review "Loft". This is the most acclaimed, both publicly and critically, movie ever to be made in my home country Belgium and it instantly broke all historical box office records over here. I don't really have a valid excuse for waiting so long (perhaps didn't want to jump into the momentarily hype?) but I'm glad to announce that "Loft" is a solid and suspenseful thriller that can easily compete with the large foreign offer of similar movies. The film deals with typical Hollywood themes (adultery, murder, conspiracy theories…) and implements the contemporary popular narrative structure of flashbacks and messed up continuity, but luckily enough the atmosphere and character drawings remain old-fashioned Flemish. Under the influence of the sleazy architect Vince, five men in their late 30's and with a typical yuppie mentality secretly share a luxurious loft in the center of Antwerp where they can go with their mistresses and/or prostitutes without having to explain hotel bills and Visa expenses to their wives. When one of them stumbles upon the barbarically butchered corpse of a young girl in the morning, they gather together in the loft to discuss the situation. There are only five keys to the apartment and the doors where locked when they discovered the girl, so logically speaking one of them has to be the culprit. Through a series of flashbacks and deeper character elaborations, the script illustrates that the five perhaps aren't the loyal and close friends than they might think and that their lies, unfaithfulness and deception will finally bring them down. The scenario, spawn from the creative and versatile mind of Bart De Pauw, practically unfolds like a mystery thriller with Giallo allures. The plot grows increasingly convoluted with each flashback and each new red herring, and just when you think all the revelations are made, there's another new and unpredictable plot twist. The final twist is perhaps even one too many, but then still the events remains plausible and very well-written. Numerous sequences in "Loft" are very powerful and display a genuine sense of craftsmanship. The roughly edited and fast paced sequence inside the casino, where all protagonists are gathered not only with their wives but also with their mistresses and personal opponents, is nail-bitingly tense and atmospheric. Some of the characters are stereotypical, like the lightly inflammable bad-boy Filip and the nerdy Luc, but those aren't obstacles. Despite of the easily exploitative themes, the amount of gratuitous sex and explicit violence is kept low in favor of suspense-building and intrigue. This is particularly praiseworthy for a Belgian film, rest assured.

The movie takes a while to pick up steam but soon enough the director takes us on exactly the kind of roller-coaster ride we want out of a whodunit thriller. The story's very sly and just when you think you've figured it all out, it slips away from you, it's like trying to hold on to a wet bar of soap. Van Looy's greatest accomplishment is avoiding the sin most of the movies in this genre make: neglect the characters. Without losing pace, we manage to really get to know the pawns in our chess game, and as each one's motivations start to sink in, even the most unlikely become suspect.

We see here assembled a who's who of Belgian stars, the dream team cast, even the smaller roles are given to top class actors (Jan Decleir). The film's lighter on it's feet than Van Looy's previous, we (on first sight) get to deal with far less tortured souls, which makes some room for humorous intervals, I fear a lot of these will get lost in translation.

As in all stories, but even more so in plot-driven thrillers, the end's the most important part. It delights me that they didn't choose a ridiculous, nonsensical ending as so much postmodern thrillers shamelessly do these days. I can't give anything away of course, but I for one didn't see it coming at all and yet it adds up when you replay previous scenes in your head.

Go see it, it merits national and international attention.

What you can expect from this movie is a lot. First of all it's a thriller whodonit which last 2 hours. At the end of the movie you feel like is this over already??? That's a bloody good sign.

And then there's a lot more... five men share a loft where they meet their fancy women (read mistresses), they all have different personalities and that's a lot to take in a movie, but they are so well pictured and so well drawn in the script(Bart De Pauw) that they all become our friends sooner or later. Then include the wives and the mistresses, it's a real challenge to think who DID it.

Apart from that and without giving out any clues, it's so well acted, and the LOFT where most of the scenes are shot feels like a tremendous dangerous being. The LOFT has an extra role in this movie, believe me.

This movie, as a good friend told me, is not "The Usual Suspects" but it's close... very close. I thought about this a lot and then I think of course it is not the Usual Suspects, nobody wants a remake of that movie.

Loft is different but you will like the characters, not one second bores you except maybe the knife combat which takes a bit too long.

I especially enjoyed the Düsseldorf bar and the Casino scene. Great cinematography.

For people who enjoyed this I recommend the movie "Shades" with Mickey Rourke, I preferred this one a lot more than The Alzheimer Affair. But then, that's me...