- It never occurred to me that there was such a thing as Belgian rednecks. Apparently there are! There are some spectacular, spectacular mullets in this movie.
- The family in this movie is comprised of a Gunther, a thirteen year old boy, his father and his four brothers, their long suffering mother, and an abused sister who drops in with her daughter just as quickly as they drop out again. This family is a CAS nightmare, as Nele Fockedey — say it out loud and imagine the amusement of the father and his brothers — discovers when she’s sent by Gunther’s school to evaluate Gunther’s decrepit home life. There’s obviously a lot of love, honour, and loyalty between the brothers but that’s not always enough to adequately care for a child. When you take your ten year-old niece to the bar and congratulate her for sticking it to the waitress by drinking a glass of beer, you have problems. When your child has to mop vomit off your face with a balled up (and presumably used) pair of underwear, you have intense problems.
- It’s funny in places — the drinking contest, the naked bicycle race, the Roy Orbison comeback party — but these characters are too depressing to keep the movie positive for very long. It doesn’t help that although Gunther has “escaped” his family by eventually becoming a successful novelist, he’s still an asshole himself. Being a Belgian redneck is congenital, apparently. Gunther turns out pretty appalling in my book and I don’t have much sympathy for the problems he encounters after his girlfriend gets pregnant. Ugh.
- During the Q&A, some woman actually asked the director if Belgium suffers from a high incidence of alcoholism in general or if it was limited to the lower class. o_O
- I chose this movie because of the original (and much more hilarious) short description on the TIFF website:
From Belgium comes this rambunctious, vulgar story of a 13-year-old boy growing up in a small village with his father and three uncles, all drunken, incorrigible louts. Yet they are hilarious and they love Roy Orbison.
It was the bit about Roy Orbison that sold me.
The Misfortunates
How do you say “You might be a redneck if…” in Flemish?
IMDB Plot Synopsis Person growing up in a marginal family. Adaptation of a book of Dimitri Verhulst.