Eldorado

From the bench seat of a station wagon zipping through Belgium’s desolate landscapes blossoms a gentle tale. Two withdrawn and wounded strangers embark on adventures into the surly nether regions. Eldorado is so rich in subtlety and all too comfortable in awkward silences (with spurts of screwball and serious punctuation marks) that, after watching it, what seemed normal turns sublime. Teetering towards the risqué, the film socks with a most arresting, emotional bottom line. Auds will surely want in on this action.

When a twenty-something heroin addict named Elie (Fabrice Adde) tries his hand as a novice thief to fund the next fix he’s met by a crazed car salesman named Yvan (Bouli Lanners) wielding a lead pipe. The bozo thief, Elie, refuses to come out, and Yvan doesn’t have the stomach to call the cops. They remain deadlocked: the thief is below the bed, while the testy homeowner sits on a chair. When Elie tries to sneak away he wakes Yvan who throws his pipe at the perp, forcing him to tumble down the stairs. Is he dead? Not exactly. His wrist hurts. So goes the meet-and-greet. No shake of hands. No salute. Just a pipe slamming into his back into summersault. The two sit down. No phone call to the cops. Man-to-man.

Yvan drops his thief off at a crossroads with a few bucks to tide him over (he courteously asks for money this time) till he reaches his parents’ house. Work is the unsavory car biz—and from the looks of it Yvan’s not very good at selling 20 year old American autos—trying to hype up a jalopy as being show worthy gets laughs. He tries to verbally out-joust his clients and they don’t seem to be buying. After a hard day, Yvan sips a beer and chomps on a snack at the local dive bar and routinely sets back home. It’s a mundane existence. En route, he lucks on his thief—in the same spot he was dropped-off. Conscience gets the better of him and he offers the hitchhiking Goldie Locks a lift. Spontaneously, the two embark on road trip in a blue 1979 Chevy V8, gas-guzzling boat.

From the outset the score is a tearing Dick Dale-sounding guitar chaptering the film’s beats. The music plays a role of its own, offering cunning interludes and dizzying detours from some of the serious matters. With the booming title track from The Milkshakes you may be in Europe but elements carry Americana tints; everything is stuck in a retro world and so too are much of the towns and rural dwellings peopled by curious (potentially criminal) sorts. The mere fact that Yvan sells cars from America’s more low-grade lemon era reflects a sort of desperate longing to accomplish the impossible.

Hood popped and pulled over on the shoulder of the interstate the dopes try to figure out the car’s malfunctions. A good Samaritan in the form of an unhinged old man comes to aid. Cut to the man’s home garage where several cars are sheathed in towels. Each is banged-up with worse than cosmetic nicks. They’ve all been involved in some sort of fatal fender-bender. He talks about them as a pimp would his deceased prostitutes. You hope the man wasn’t behind the wheel of each car that mowed down the victims. But how would he be able to explain the “beautiful little feminine dent” made by a dying woman?

You learn a lot about the world and humanity in the close quarters of the car. The druggie and the loner each break through the layers and soon Yvan is talking about losing his brother to an overdose and Elie cops to his drug use. Each finally sheds their tough guy veneer. Maybe it’s the incredible landscapes—the flicking green pine trees, the infinite meadows and hillsides that are so serene—the travelers move through, sometimes in dead silence. It would seem the two in the car are the only humans on earth stranded in this still world within worlds.

The film could be titled The Pariah and the Paranoid Junkie or Once a Junkie... The title itself touches on the mythical leanings of a search for that golden holy grail, the silver lining in the concrete. A bond forms between the two that is not so easily defined. They team together by knocking off a gas station of beer and eats and motor oil after the clerk ignores them. They need eachother. For Yvan, this is his second chance to save his brother. For Elie—whose real name turns out to be Didier—he’s trying to steer clear of the smack and take the high road.

Almost unlit, the work evokes this unpolished, fertile feel. Nothing is glossed-up. It’s a matte texture and the blemishes and all of the girth underneath gets exposed. So too is the script; spare in language and action however, robust in delivery. One could only hope to find such succulence in austerity. Credit the bold helmer and the lead actor Bouli Lanners for having the courage to put himself into the minefield of acting and directing. He is superb at both.

After it’s clear that Elie—err Didier—is not going to stay at his folks house, Yvan drives him to the city where trouble awaits. The intersection of the two relationships and inevitable separation conjures a sense that nothing matters but the moment. This intersection between a crook and his victim forges a trust founded on thievery. Chances were taken and miles logged bringing a maturation that defies the cynic in us all.

Distributor: Film Movement
Cast: Bouli Lanners and Fabrice Adde
Director/Screenwriter: Bouli Lanners
Producer: Jacque-Henri Bronckart
Genre: Drama; French-language, subtitled
Rating: Unrated
Running time: 80 min.
Release date: May 1 NY