Would you buy a bluegrass movie from a Belgian? Thought not. How about a family drama of love and other catastrophes, driven by magnetically convincing performances, a script of unblinking honesty and editing that is as adventurous as it is intelligent?
Based on a play by lead actor Heldenbergh, thissupremely classy melodrama, which won the audience favourite at Berlin and was one of the five nominees for the Best Foreign Film Oscar, achieves something close to a miracle: it extracts from a story drenched in grief and loss a keen sense of what it is to be human. It never comes near handing us a cheap happy ending, but I walked away from it wanting to cheer.
Heldenbergh plays Didier Bontinck, who's as close as you will find to a cowboy in Ghent. He looks the part (hat, beard, pickup truck) and he plays banjo in a bluegrass band. His boyish romanticism catches the eye of the extravagantly tattooed Elise Vandevelde (Baetens). She moves in. A daughter is born, named Maybelle - "You know, like Carter", he tells his mates.
It gives little away to say that tragedy strikes, since the title and the band's opening rendition of the song it comes from, the old hymn Will the Circle Be Unbroken?, offer very heavy hints. In any case, much of the film is about the tragedy's aftermath. The shock waves of loss cause cracks in the masonry of a marriage and to watch the actors deal with it is to be touched both by the mastery of storytelling and the pain of the story.
Whatever that summary may sound like, this is no disease-of-the-week weepie.
Heldenbergh and Baetens do mesmerising work on Van Groeningen's script, in which not a word or a glance is wasted. Time after time the camera takes us in really close and they never blink. The opening 10 minutes, a sustained display of astonishing virtuosity, makes us feel like we have known these two for years. But the film's cut takes us deeper still, cleverly merging past and present (we don't see the couple meet until the mid-point) in a way that freights the smallest moment with heavy dramatic irony.
An improbable on-stage event towards the end that comes from and leads nowhere is the singular misstep that stops this from being a perfect film; it's a jarringly uncomfortable moment even for a film that doesn't try to make us comfortable. But it's a small blemish on a work of great mastery.
Did I mention the bluegrass? Do not be afraid. The music acts as a poignant counterpoint to the action and the stars - who aren't lip-synching - deliver the goods. When the great Townes Van Zandt's If I Needed You arrives, it takes a harder heart than mine not to break, just a little.
