Jaco Van Dormael
DIO ESISTE e vive a Bruxelles

What a gem of a movie.
I watched yesterday "Dio esiste e vive a Bruxelles" by director Jaco van Dormael, in an art-house cinema in Rome (one of the few that still resists the invasion of those horrendous American multiplexes!) and I am not exaggerating when I say it rightfully ranks among my best films of the past 20 years. Or maybe ever.
A skillful balance of comedy, depth, non sense, brilliance, vision, spirituality, intelligence, poetry, and moments of true comedy.
A film, I believe, unclassifiable, with several layers of reading, only for people who love cinema and are mentally open to the new and the unpredictable.
A film that dares to speak about God (which is why it was boycotted in Roman theaters: only in 1 out of 700 available!) and depicts Him in a brutally secular manner, as a tyrannical, sleazy, ugly, and violent old man who treats his wife terribly and beats his daughter and who, with hints of sadism, loves to be a jerk with humans, one of his most successful creations (according to him).
A film full of brilliant ideas, dense with concepts (1 every 3/4 minutes by my calculation), some true masterpieces of surrealism and poetry (the dance of a single hand in front of a girl without a limb is heart-wrenching).... absolutely CRAZY, in the most positive sense of the word.
A modern film, mixing different genres, able to move from laughter to tears in the few minutes of a scene change.
A film that is IMPOSSIBLE to forget.
To those who follow me (but also to those who hate me), I strongly recommend it.
If I had been a director, instead of a reviewer of trash things here on Deb, THIS is perhaps the only film I would have wanted to make in my career.
Meee, how it irks me...