MOSCOW, BELGIUM
Where are we here in America on the older woman/younger man scenario? I fear that the term "cougar" with it's pejorative tinge says it all. Pathetic older women (i.e. women close to or over 40 "prey" on younger men, whereas, in films anyway, a 45 year old male star isn't even recognized as older than his, say, 30 year old co-star. At least we're not being punished like we were in 1950s films like Sirk's All That Heaven Allows and the Fassbinder homage Ali Fear Eats the Soul...except well Diane Lane in Unfaithful. Fortunately Europeans don't seem to be quite as uptight about aging women as demonstrated in Moscow, Belgium a sweet little May/December romance about a woman suffering through her husband's mid-life crisis.
Matty (Barbara Sarafian) is a post office worker in the town of the title, so named because of a regiment of Cossacks stationed there in 1814. Moscow is a working class neighborhood on the outskirts of Ghent in Belgium. Matty's husband, Werner (Johan Heldebergh) has run off with one of his art students and is vacillating about whether to stay or come back home. In the meantime, Matty's left with 3 kids, one of whom, fortunately, is a wiser than both her parents seventeen year old named Vera (Anemone Valcke). Harried and trying to exit a grocery store parking lot, Matty is run into by truck, whose operator Johnny (Jurgen Delnaet) has some issues with women. Nonetheless an awkward pursuit by the much younger man begins. He's full on, she resists, wanting her "safe" old life with her husband back.
Director, Christophe van Rompaey, shot the picture in naturalistic style, entirely free of any artifice, or attempt to portray working class people in inexplicably beautiful surroundings. This is the gray and drab urban life, in a hi-rise apartment building that could be in any anonymous city. This of course makes it universally relatable, as opposed to the melodramatic fantasies called "romantic comedy" we women are so often fed in the U.S. So, probably, not too many people here in the U.S. will see it. Then the rights to the film will be sold to some studio (mini-major) and maybe it will be remade as a vehicle for Uma Thurman or Diane Lane which isn't necessarily at a bad thing.
But, as I will say for similar films which have been sold this way such as Tell No One, Let The Right One In or dare I say The Ring, we lose something by not seeing the film in it's original cultural context. What we miss is an engagement with a world outside of our own, always an enriching experience...well not always, I'm sure there are plenty of bad Belgian films that we don't need to see. Moscow, Belgium is not one of them. It's an unusually honest, unglamorous and mostly funny look at the indignities of mid-life as well as the indignities of opening yourself to love. Matty fights the so hard against the changes that have already happened. The shock and sadness of being shaken awake, unwillingly, at a time when you thought you had everything figured out is beautifully spelled out in this film. Conversely, the pain of betrayal, even when you aren't 40 is equally hard to take. But once you embrace that change you have been avoiding, this film seems to say, all manner of possibilities may open up.
Moscow Belgium opens December 19, 2008
Directed by Christophe van Rompaey; written by Jean-Claude van Rijckeghem and Pat van Beirs; produced by Jean-Claude van Rijckeghem; director of photography, Ruben Impens; edited by Alain Dessauvage, music by Tuur Florizoone.
With: Barbara Sarafian (Matty), Jurgen Delnaet (Johnny), Johan Heldenbergh (Werner), and Anemone Valcke (Vera).
