Belgium's official submission for this year's Best Foreign Film Academy Award is "The Ardennes" and it opens Jan. 20 at Digital Gym Cinema.
Selecting the nominees for Best Foreign Film have changed over the years. Currently, the Academy allows each country to submit a single film. Since 1970, Belgium has garnered seven Best Foreign Film nominations but has yet to take home gold.
This year, Belgium has chosen "The Ardennes," a film produced by Bart Van Langendonck, who also produced "Bullhead." That film went on to be nominated for Best Foreign Film in 2011. "Bullhead" was a violent, brutal male drama. This year, Belgium's hopeful Oscar entry is equally testosterone driven.
"The Ardennes" opens with a perfectly designed shot of a man, fully clothed and with a stocking covering his face, emerging from a swimming pool in slow motion. We know a lot from this single image. We know the man is in the midst of committing a crime, that things are most definitely not going his way, and that he is experiencing panic.
We quickly discover that there were two men involved in the break-in: Dave (Jeroen Perceval, who also co-wrote the film) is the one who gets away while his brother Kenneth (Kevin Janssens) is arrested. He refuses to cooperate with the police and is sentenced to seven years in jail. A third person was also involved, Kenneth's girlfriend Sylvie (Veerle Baetens,) who was driving the getaway car.
Cut to four years later. Dave and Sylvie are now a couple and are expecting a baby, and Kenneth is about to be released from prison. His release creates tension that soon erupts in violence and tragedy.
The film marks the directorial debut of Robin Pront, who had previously won acclaim for his short films. "The Ardennes" feels like a companion piece to "Bullhead" in the way it looks at a particular kind of male character. The men in both films may try to be good and behave themselves, but they have a difficult time controlling their emotions, and they have a tendency to resolve their conflicts with violence.
"The Ardennes" doesn't deliver the gut punch that "Bullhead" did nor does it possess that film's complexity. "Bullhead" shows a surprising vulnerability and heartbreak underneath the macho veneer. "The Ardennes" doesn't concern itself with much character exploration or depth. Instead, it delivers an intense family drama in which sibling rivalry proves stronger than brotherly love.
Pront opens and closes his film on strong notes but lets the film lose intensity in between. Pront handles the violence well. It often comes up abruptly and brutally but is over quickly. He has a particularly good sequence at the car wash where the brothers work.
"The Ardennes" is in Flemish, French and Dutch with English subtitles and is unrated. It is a promising first feature by Pront. It serves up a dark, gritty tale about violence unchecked.
