Camping Cosmos

This movie ends a first part of the Jan Bucquoy's cinematographic career. Camping Cosmos is in fact the second and the last traditional movie directed by the Belgian director, chief of the "irregulars" Belgian directors. Traditional means spectacular, filmed with 35mm camera, with a technical crew, based on a film script and with a traditional production and distribution system. T hat is the second production of the period called by Bucquoy himself of "temporary integration" in the classical movie system. Bucquoy makes all the possible to provoke the laughter, that's why Camping Cosmos is a very funny comedy, full of citations of the surrealist and "situationnist" culture, full of amazing situations. Also the happy end takes place in this movie! How make a "popular" and intellectual movie? How talk about the Belgian culture to the Belgians? How talk about revolution in early eighties? That's the challenge of Bucquoy who keep on tailing the adventures of his favourite character: Jan Bucquoy. The protagonist of his first movie. Adult and divorced he is now the cultural director of a camping on the Belgian coast trying to learn to the holidaymakers the principal arguments of his counterculture. His daughter's arrival in the camping give him once again the chance to think about his life and dreams. A summer on the Belgian coast, a trip in the Belgian culture. An original portrait of many different universal characters. Really funny.

This second opus of "The Sex life of the Belgians" is one of the most entertaining piece Bucquoy delivered so far. In an almost mainstream colorful setup, the director takes us deep into shameless Belgian trailer park culture. Summer camp sized, the belgo-bucquoy society including its regular nefarious revolutionary characters and adult-fake Tintin is quiet enjoyable. Featuring a couple of neat local celebrities such as Arno or Noel Godin (totally insane as usual), and dead but cult figure, the hyper breasted Lolo Ferrari.

On this campsite at a Belgian beach the residents want to enjoy life and nothing more. The cultural animator (Jean-Henri Compère) who played also in "La vie sexuelle des Belges 1950-1978" is apparently a fan of the plays of Bertolt Brecht and his "Mutter Courage" but that is not of the taste of the residents who don't show up . I liked miss Vandeputte (Lolo Ferrari) who is behaving as a woman in search for love. The scene with the Russian folksong when she has an orgasm is fabulous. The daughter of the cultural animator (Fanny Hanciaux) is a girl with much sensibility and she tries to understand her father. The writer Pierre Mertens (Noël Godin) is ridiculous with his armchair in the sand at the beach. The radio-operator Tintin (Claude Semal) is pathetic and he is really the person to commit suicide. Football is very important for the Belgians and you see some excerpts of the match Belgium-Russia of 1986 but there is also a boxing-match with the Belgian challenger of Cassius Clay (Jean-Pierre Coopman) for the world-title. There is also a song-contest and a beauty-contest in this movie while the director wants us to show real life at a caravan park in a comical way.

This movie is a surrealistic description of a colony of holiday-makers on a camping site at the Belgian beach. They all have one thing in common: they just want to do nothing or have sex. They all develop different attitudes because they think that they feel free far from home. So you see them in a relax way. Miss Vandeputte (Lolo Ferrari) is constantly looking after a new lover. The director of the art-festival at the beach is confronted with the blames of his daughter who claims he is loosing his time with the people of the camping site who never show up for one of his attractions be it a play of Bertold Brecht or an interview with the writer Pierre Mertens (Noël Godin). The residents of the caravan park are only interested in looking at a boxing-match or a beauty-contest. I liked this movie because it shows in a funny way the difference between people when they go on holiday.

Apology of bad Belgian taste

This movie is in the tradition of Belgian Surrealism: Marcel Broothaerdts, Marcel Marien... but there was never a Belgian Surrealist long feature movie. So there it is now.

Camping Cosmos develops around the items: Beer, Football and Revolution. Behind, there is the strange story of the daughter of the cultural animator who returns at the campsite where her beloved father is after she was kidnapped in Italy. One does not always know where one should find himself in this patchwork of beauty contests and song contests. The pie throwing of Pierre Mertens is a story in itself too. I believe that the author wanted to give an impression of Belgian working class families on a holiday camp. There is no culture, only sport and entertainment.

Everybody looks discouraged because of their interrupted sex life that cannot take ground in this unnatural surroundings with its deprived individuals at the edge of society.

The camp site is manned by fascinating individualistic persons who live a life without adventure. There is no hope for a better life on this Belgian beach which has everything of a nudist camp without the flair and the passion of a normal sex life.

So this second part of the "Sexual Life of the Belgians" is not only a statement of the lack of cultural life in this vacation circumstances, but also of the sentimental emptiness of the common Belgians at retirement.