Being from Belgium, I realize that our national movie industry is often (unfairly) treated like a big joke by international critics. A modest output with the odd failure (CLOSE, anyone ?) may not impress the cynical though we have produced our share of gems such as MASCARA, MALPERTUIS and GASTON'S WAR.
LE BAL DES PANTINS, which I saw theatrically in Brussels during its all too brief run, is one of the strangest, lyrically poetic and most hauntingly beautiful films made on my home turf or, indeed, anywhere else.
Following the death of his business partner Raymond, with whom he operates a rubber plantation in Malaysia during the 1950s, handsome young Marcel (Marc Duret) sets out in search of the old man's estranged daughter Loulou to whom he has left all his belongings, the plan being to seduce the inheritance out from under her. When he locates the girl (Inge Paulussen) in a rundown Belgian nightclub where she performs torch songs between mud fights (yep, you've read that right...), he discovers she's an embittered paraplegic, overprotected by her mother, also the club's owner (veteran actress Andréa Ferréol). Hiding his true identity, Marcel gets a job as a technician at the bar, devising an elaborate marionette-like structure as to allow Loulou to be moved about during her upcoming new act. He gets so involved in the plight of this strange and willful girl that he comes to love the one he chose to victimize. But will her friends and family be quite so understanding when they find out who he really is ?
Delicately acted (though Duret occasionally hams it up when he should have been reigned in) and directed with a sure hand by Herman Van Eyken (whose first feature film this is, astonishingly), this film presents viewers with an original and quite unique love story set against the unlikeliest of circumstances. The narrative only stumbles sporadically during the mid-section yet richly rewards viewer patience. Above all, this film contains without doubt one of the most incredible musical sequences ever concocted, Loulou's intricate stage act to Arno's gently ironic "(Il est) Tombé Du Ciel", a breathtaking scene of such invention and poetry mere words could never do justice to.
