Advertising
Supported by
Critics’ choice
Bas Devos captures the quiet neighborhoods of Brussels in this drama about a hard-working woman who discovers hees homeless.
By Glenn Kenny
When you purchase a price ticket for an independently qualified movie on our website, we earn an associate fee.
This new film by Belgian filmmaker Bas Devos opens with a static view of an apartment’s living room and its window. Nobody’s there. The photo is maintained as the room goes from absolutely lit to absolutely dark. “I see the passage of time, ” said one womanover. “How would a stranger feel here?”
This is Khadija, a Middle-aged Maghreb immigrant who lives and works in Brussels. She’s part of a corporate cleaning team at night. We see her running machines in the lobby of a construction site and laughing with her colleagues as they have coffee in a convention hall. On the subway, she sleeps too much and is trapped at the end of the line.
This film, the story of his return home, seduces and fascinates on many levels. Devos and cinematographer Grimm Vandekerckhove, running in 16 millimetres, capture the numb areas of Brussels with visionary talent. The concentrate is distorted so that the artifacts of public lighting and traffic grow and dance in front of the viewer’s eyes. (Some sequences recall the 2007 film “Quiet City,” a Brooklyn night pastoralist generally noisy through American director Aaron Katz.)
There is more than an impressionism encouraged in the paintings here. Khadija meets a homeless man and his dog. She receives from a young woguy who runs a convenience store at a gas station. These and other exchanges involve resonant observations of life experienced through other people who, to varying degrees, are at a disadvantage of their rights, such as immigrants and single mothers. “Everyone wants a resting position,” Bruce Springsteen sings in one of his 1980s hits. This film is a strong representation of other people who have been widely deserved that position.
Ghost Tropic Unrated. In Dutch and French, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 25 minutes. Watch virtual cinemas.
Advertising