Emerging on the international cinema scene with a trio of tender yet emotionally exacting features in Violet, Hellhole, and Ghost Tropic, Belgian director Bas Devos has turned a new leaf with Here. The Berlinale prizewinner is a moviegoing experience as gorgeous as it is tranquil, following Stefan (Stefan Gota), a Romanian worker who begins forming connections with both nature and a bryologist named Shuxiu (Liyo Gong). The simplicity of the narrative is one of the film’s strong suits, Devos luxuriating in the gestures on display, from gifting soup to uncovering the ground beneath your feet.
I caught up with Devos at the U.S. premiere of Here at the 61st New York Film Festival, where we discussed the origins of the project, the film’s strong visual language, exuding a sense of compassion, the strange power of moss, and more. Ahead of the film’s theatrical run beginning this...
I caught up with Devos at the U.S. premiere of Here at the 61st New York Film Festival, where we discussed the origins of the project, the film’s strong visual language, exuding a sense of compassion, the strange power of moss, and more. Ahead of the film’s theatrical run beginning this...
- 2/8/2024
- by Jordan Raup
- The Film Stage
The kind of drama such a bombastic title suggests is scrupulously avoided in Belgian director Bas Devos’ heavy-lidded “Hellhole,” an uncannily beautiful but forbiddingly remote exercise in sculptural, sepulchral filmmaking. Even the reference, to then-candidate Donald Trump’s use of the word to describe the city of Brussels, through which the film prowls, has been superseded by so much Trumpian bluster since that non-Belgians may find themselves struggling to make the connection. And the connection is itself vaguely confusing, because while Devos’ love for his city does pulse up from beneath the Teflon camerawork, the mournfulness of his portrait of a sleepwalking citizenry still low-level reeling from the 2016 Brussels terror attacks undercuts any potential irony. This may not be a vision of hell, but it sure feels like purgatory.
The attacks themselves are scarcely mentioned, though at times a character will speak of some omnipresent fear, or a sleep disorder,...
The attacks themselves are scarcely mentioned, though at times a character will speak of some omnipresent fear, or a sleep disorder,...
- 2/28/2019
- by Jessica Kiang
- Variety Film + TV
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