Villa Des Roses (2002)

I love this movie so much

Who payed the critics

A film of deceptively outspoken contemporary relevance, this is cinema at its most alert, alarming and alive.

There are moments that feel comical, some horrific, and some downright inspiring but the tonal shifts hardly matter as the end results come to a film that's perfect for this time.

It's a totally surreal movie that did remind me of "Delicatessen". Even the peculiar pastel colors are similar. The tale? A new maid starts working at a dilapidated boarding house - a pension - in Paris, in 1913, and she gets involved with a young German artist who lives there. Her relationship with him is the central part of the plot, but the other characters add subplots in their own strange ways. The people who live there are peculiar, the owners are peculiar, the situations are peculiar... but I got caught in it and came to enjoy the faintly claustrophobic atmosphere. Drama, touches of black humor, absurdity, love and betrayal, it's got it all. Not an absolute masterpiece but well worth seeing.

Boring. Boring. Boring. Sure, some of the shots looked sort of pretty, but not unlike all the other films you've seen dealing with this period. Nothing new or interesting happens, so you can't even call the film daring or interesting. Some people will call the film well made (even the ones that don't like it), but what does that mean? If nothing interesting is shown and you care about none of the characters, is a film well made because it looks like it costs a lot? No, this film was badly written and directed, let's face it.

In the great line of both Belgian cinema as well as European cinema, Frank Van Passel keeps up with the likes of Kümel and Delvaux on the one hand and maybe even the Tavianni brothers and Kieslowski on the other hand. In time, 'Villa des Roses', will prove a corner-stone experience of Belgian cinematographic capabilities, and this along with the line of traditional great names of the past (mentioned above), names that also shaped European cinema into what it is now, or better into what it should be: rich quality. One can only hope that this period of time will be a very short one, for audiences abroad shouldn't be deprived of this work of art.

Frank Van Passel proves again he is one of Belgiums leading directors. Once again, the crew he uses is very talented, he has some big international stars in the film (some), and the film is an adaptation of Willem Elschot classic novel. You can understand, we have been waiting for it. But Frank van Passel fails in this adaptation (or is it screenwriter Christophe Dirickx, who hasn't been very impressionating any more for some years).The novel is a tipical multi plot story about the guests of an old pension in Paris. Christophe Dirickx and Frank Van Passel choosed to pick out one story line, and to minimize or forget the others. They tri to tell a little and painfull love story about a young servant and a german guest in an old paris hotel in 1913. Sure the story is painfull, but not always as it was ment to be. They meet, the seem to fall in love, 3 minutes later Grunewald (the german guest) seems to have lost his interest in the girl, they have some emotional conflict (Grunewald still loves her?) and the world war one begins and ends the story.During this film you keep on asking the question why. Why do they fall in love in the first place? Why does she has to give up her father and son for grunewald? Why does grunewald believes they can't live together when they love eachother so much? You don't get any answer, and as a result of this, you lose interest in the story.Maybe, Villa des Roses just doesn't work as a movie, maybe some novels can't be translated to the screen. But I lost the trust I had in Christophe Dirickx since Manneke Pis, Frank Van Passels debut. There are just to many holes in this script. To many personages disapear before they are properly introduced, like the abandond girlfriend of one of the guest, who we see for the first time the moment she has to leave the pension. Or the "nurse" who "helpes" the couple with an abortion, and then seems to live in the pension?Not a bad film after all, thanks to the talent of Frank Van Passel and dop Jan van Caille. But after Manneke Pis and Terug naar Oosterdonk, never the less a disapointment. 7 out of 10