Day twenty: The Broken Circle Breakdown (March, 29)

About the movie The Broken Circle Breakdown I knew nothing but the name and that the film was beautiful, according to Lu, the friend that told me to watch it. 

The title tells everything: there was a circle, once, that was whole, for it was broken in some moment. And, after that already heartbreaking event, there was the ultimate breakdown.

On day nine, talking about romantic love, I said how the romantic movies usually have its end at the first love declaration and subsequent kiss between the two new lovers. The Broken Circle tells the whole story. And it does that in a non linear narrative - as neither feelings and remembrances are linear. The viewer has to built the puzzle to complete the story. We see Elise and Didier in different moments of their lives together. The difficult, heartbreaking, happy, sad, painful, musical, unbearable times together. 

The movie could be called a melodrama - ok, it is actually a melodrama. But by the gentle and never condescending hands of Belgian director Felix van Groeningen, it is in fact sweet, sad and, of course, heartbreaking. In some times, I had to distance myself a little in order not to sink too hard in some aspects of the story - one of my worst nightmares. 

I turned off the TV, went to sleep, and dreamt about Elise, Didier and Maybelle. The last was running around the house, but I couldn't reach her. And today I woke up with the same ambivalent mixture of sadness and sweetness, warm feelings for characters that portraited the loss experienced for unfortunately  too many people.

The Broken Circle Breakdown. Directed by Felix van Groeningen.
With: Veerle Baetens, Johan Heldenbergh, Nell Cattrysse.
Writer: Felix van Groeningen and Carls Joos from the play by Johan Heldenbergh and Mieke Doebels.
Belgium/Netherlands, 2012, 111 min., Dolby Digital, Color (DVD). 

PS: In an interview, Johan Heldenbergh, actor and writer of the original play, said that he wrote the story as a political statement about religion and politics linked to the George W. Bush's veto to the stem cell research. The admiration of his character with the US, specially the bluegrass music, is, for me, a way to sustain how some of our beliefs are built in glass ceilings. 

PPS: Fragments: Mud, 2012; The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones, 2013 (a lousy adaptation of a good story).