This film is only slightly different then the book from Willem Elsschot. I enjoyed the film, because of it's photography of the 30s and the impressive character of Boormans. Of course, it would be better to read the book first: then you enjoy the visualisation of the characters you read - although I wonder if the book has ever been translated into English. Finally, I guess that the film will be more appriciated in Western-Europe, since those countries developped about the same during history. With other words: the photography shows a bit of our past (except for some Belgian specific things of course), in contrary to the US.