Ultranova

Actoir Bouli Lanner's feature directorial debut is a quite under-spoken film, which tells the story about a disillusioned and lonely young man, Dimitri, living in the gray and tired outskirts of the Belgian city Liege. Dimitri works as an real estate agent, together with a couple of other men equally challenged with their own demons.

A chance meeting with Cathy at a neighbors party changes his life drastically, and this is the charm of the film, because it's introduction is quite hard to swallow. It's so bleak and boring, that I struggled with enjoying the movie at first.

The film is slow moving, and kept in very bleak colors, and I would have enjoyed that the color-palette had changed along with the story. It doesn't change, of course. Still the acting is good, and Dimitri changes drastically, even in his own eyes.

The film gives associations towards films by Aki Kaurismäki or Bruce MacDonald, or even Jim Jarmusch. Strange, under-spoken, everyday lives with occasionally odd happenings around situations we all know quite well.

Many good intentions, but still not on the level of the three mentioned masters of this art.