Friday, February 29, 2008
Congorama: cinema of bloodlines
It is wonderful to come across a film of its own heart and universe. Congorama, a 2006 Belgian film is a world of inventors, heredity, adoption, Canada, chance, electric cars and World's Fairs. It somehow reminds me of Im Juli, a German film from the same Hamburg studio that brought you Mostly Martha. Both films have intriguing and sudden circumstances and dynamic cinematic qualities. There is a kind of heart for the charaters or at least a heartful look at the situations they find themselves in.
The surprises and plot connections make for an interesting journey. My rearview mirror as scribe to you on this one is obscured. In other words, I very much risk saying too much, giving too much away at any given point. I don't often view DVDs a second time before returning them, but a look at the first ten minutes after my initial viewing convinces me I must in this case. I can now see how incredibly tight and well-orchestrated this is.
I'm not sure what draws me to certain films when I read over synopses. I probably look for possibilities of something being a little bit different than mainstream fare. The synopsis below is theone at imdb credited to the director and writer of the film, Philippe Falardeau (also available in French at the film's website) but somehow Congorama's uniqueness is hinted at.
"Michel, son of a paralyzed writer, husband to a Congolese refugee and father of a future tennis champion, is an erratic Belgian inventor misunderstood by his employer. At age 41, he learns he's been adopted and was in fact birthed secretly in a Quebec barn, in Sainte-Cecile. In the summer of the year two thousand, Michel goes to Sainte-Cecile, a sleepy village that soon makes him want to run bock home. There, he meets a man who drives an anachronistic hybrid car. On their way back to Montreal, an accident will change their lives forever as well as the very future of the automotive industry. Welcome to Congorama."
posted by well-executed buffet at 10:13 PM
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