Moscow, Belgium (2008)

Very very predictable, including the post credit scene !!!

just watch it!

As somebody who had not heard any of this before, it became a curious phenomenon to sit and watch a film and slowly have the realities begin to click into place.

It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

We learn about them and are slowly drawn into caring about these individuals.. for that alone it's a terrific little film. It just has so many wonderful scenes, and there are several fine performances, coming from actors you in all probability have never seen or heard of before. Barbara Sarafian.. bit.ly/16qn7oL .. is of special note... she is from start to finish superb. Read a great line about her performance in the film.. "Sarafian is acting every second she's on screen, yet you never catch her at it." As for the two lead characters.. do they 'make it' and ultimately stay together.. who knows, but they have given us allot of enjoyment just in meeting up. Watch it.. you will enjoy it.

I loved this movie! It's amusing, touching, warm, sweet and salty and an exercise in great acting. Funny, but this the second movie I've watched recently that's set in Belgium (the other was 'In Bruges'). The nation must be striving to throw off its dull image and present a new face to the world. Moscow Belgium certainly overturns the concept that dysfunctional families are confined to North America. Here we have Eurodisfunction. Moscow (strictly Moscou) is the name of the suburb the protagonists inhabit, which as far as I can see is between Gent and the North Sea coast. It is glimpsed very briefly on the destination board on the front of a bus. This seemed to cause confusion amongst our audience and I overheard several muttered conversations as I left the theatre as to what on earth Russia had to do with it? So possibly the movie name has lost something in translation? It translates better as Collision in Moscou. Barbara Sarafian plays Matty, a rather dowdy, phlegmatic, forty-something mother of three whose art teacher husband Werner has left her for one of his students some five and a half months before. She works in a post office, takes care of the kids and – when we meet her first – is trudging half heartedly around the local megastore buying groceries. Matty is more dead than alive. Exiting the car park, she reverses into the truck of Johnny (Jurgen Delnaet) a red haired, alcoholic but quite cute truck driver some ten years her junior, and a sharp exchange of views ensues about fault and blame, which ends abruptly with the arrival of the traffic police, called by Matty. It seems Johnny has a record. The next day he turns up at her apartment to fix her damaged trunk and he asks her out for a drink. Johnny is intrigued by Matty, but she is less than enamoured of him. All she wants – she thinks – is her old life back; her husband home, her kids behaving and everything ordered and where it should be. Her coworker at the post office has assured her that sexual passion only lasts six months, so Werner will be back soon. But Johnny is persistent and Werner is flaky. Whereas Werner's new girlfriend phones him at awkward times, interrupting all his attempts to converse with his wife, Johnny is amusing and unequivocal about his desire to get Matty into his bed – or at least into the cab of his truck where he has a bunk. Matty can't quite believe she's doing this but is torn between the quiet life of a known but cheating husband and the roller coaster ride of a relationship with marginally criminal but laddishly attractive Johnny.Then she discovers that Johnny put his ex wife in hospital and all bets are off. Can someone who has done prison time for hitting his last woman be trusted to have changed? Even if he does bond with her son at an air show and bring her Italian designer shoes from his road trips and make her feel sexier than she's felt in years. Lurking in the background of all of this domestic drama are Matty and Werner's three bright children, nerdy Peter who is into airplanes, Fien who tells everyone's fortune with a deck of tarot cards and old-for-her-years Vera, who at sixteen watches and learns from the complicated mess the supposed adults are making of their sex lives. The intimate and often dull details of domestic life are lovingly filmed; Matty's obsession for feeding them blood sausage to build up pale Peter's health, the hours spent watching her laundry tumble around at the laundromat, Johnny sitting obediently at the dinner table like a slightly older version of her kids while she serves up family dinner. In one delicious scene, Johnny, Werner, Matty, the kids – everyone – share a meal while sniping at each other politely over the dinner plates and then in the midst of this domestic bliss, Vera introduces her girlfriend. She's decided life will be simpler if she is gay. Vera is played by Anemone Valcke who is both absolutely gorgeous and a very good young actress and I expect to see much, much more of her in future. The script is perfect, the dialogue real – even in subtitles – and the direction quite understated. There are subtle under tones of a fading European class system at work here too, with teacher Werner obviously thinking Johnny – as a mere truck driver whose father was a railway worker – is intellectually his inferior. You get the feeling that Werner thinks his wife is a bit déclassé too, but of course he can hardly complain about her sleeping with Johnny when he is now bedding a student. I always think a 'foreign language' movie works really well when the acting is so good that you are barely aware that you are reading subtitles. There is no attempt to overstate the humour and force feed it to the audience, rather we absorb the irony and drama of the situation while Matty weighs up the potential fun and excitement of a new life with slightly dodgy but adoring Johnny against the known status quo of getting back together with pretentious Werner. Great movie of human foibles and middle aged love. Go see.

Screenwriters, Jean-Claude Van Rijckeghem and Pat van Beirs have written a script that gives us close scrutiny at a woman's character and how it slowly changes or bends as circumstances arise. They have done it well.It is more often than not that one wold find character development like this in a "foreign" film. Maybe that is changing, and that would be a good thing. If we can trust that our audiences will watch characters interacting with one another, without the need for some cinematic shock, i.e. action, suspense, sex, etc, then we may have more movies like this in the U.S. I have nothing against action, suspense, sex, etc, it's just that we could use more movies that depict character studies.Director, Christophe Van Rompaey takes the reins and nicely dramatizes this story about a domestic life, while holding back any temptation to rush.Very nice performances are given by Barbara Sarafian, Jurgen Delnaet and Johan Hildenbergh.Barbara Sarafian, Jurgen Delnaet, Johan Heldenbergh, Anemone Valcke, Sofia Ferri , Julian Borsani, Bob De Moor, Jits Van Belle and Griet van Damme

The movie sets place in Moscow, a small Belgian town district of Ghent. Matty and Johnny, 2 very common people, collide and the movie starts. From that point on a romantic story starts with a lot of humor and hilarious scenes with genius dialogs which are rare in Belgian movies these days.This movie separates itself from all other Belgian movies by placing the characters up front and their story. That makes the movie so realistic and gives it a personal touch to the audience so they can relate with them. Also the typical dialect of the population in Ghent gives another aspect to this movie. Whereas most Belgian movies are situated in Antwerp this movie takes viewers to another location and another atmosphere which is a welcome relieve for a lot of viewers. I'm giving it 9 out of 10 stars!