J Paul Johnson
Plainly put, it’s a wonderful thing that filmmakers like Dominique Abel and Fiona Gordon can exercise their cinematic whimsy in their own way, in their own taste. The Belgian writing-acting-directing-producing duo, now on their fifth feature film, continue to explore a medium they call “poetico-burlesque,” a highly stylized, mannered approach to physical comedy influenced perhaps most directly by Buster Keaton and Jacques Tati. Their singular cinematic expression can amuse, even beguile, if at times—especially in their latest feature The Falling Star—there exists little purpose beyond the duo’s own artistic experimentation. In short, their filmmaking is something of an “acquired” taste, delightful as it may be at any given moment, yet one that may not be worth the effort for filmgoers weaned on more conventional fare.
The Falling Star is a caper film, mining tropes of mistaken identity with a dead-ringer double plot in a richly colorful film noir milieu. Abel’s Boris is a former radical activist with a long dark past, a recluse hiding in the shadows of the tiny Falling Star bar where, it seems, no patrons exist to identify him. That is, until a hitman, Georges (Bruno Romy) appears, wielding a shotgun at point-blank range. Fortunately for Boris, the hitman’s weapon misfires, blowing off his own prosthetic arm instead—an example of the film’s offbeat humor, if you find that sort of thing funny—and Boris narrowly escapes. So does the hitman, though, necessitating a new plan for Boris and his partners-in-cahoots, barmaid Kayoko (Japanese dancer and choreographer Kaori Ito) and doorman Tim (Philippe Martz).
Fortune arrives when Tim and Kayoko spot a prospective double, a down-on-his-luck depressive named Dom (also played by Abel). The two work a little makeover magic, and voílà!—Dom is a dead ringer for Boris, which, as you might imagine, does not exactly work to his advantage, what with a single-minded, highly aggravated hitman with a reconditioned-but-still-malfunctioning gun arm still on his trail and everything. Complicating matters further are the fact that Dom’s estranged wife Fiona (Gordon) just so happens to be a private eye: guess what case lands in her seedy office?
Anyway, the plot matters little in The Falling Star. Each narrative act is, simply, an occasion for a set piece of sorts. That might be a gag where a gunman’s prosthetic arm backfires, dressing a unconscious Dom becomes an elaborate dance, or, a là Chaplin in Modern Times, the protagonist unwittingly finds himself in the midst of a protest parade. Other scenes are even slimmer, for instance, existing apparently only for the purpose of allowing a specific visual, like the too-tall sunflower stalk Fiona drives to her late son’s gravesite. The Abel-and-Gordon team create an impressive visual conceit for the film: it’s kind of like the richly colorful milieu of a mid-eighties Fassbinder melodrama, where instead the characters engage in lo-fi wacky hijinks and slapstick gags.
The impact would be, frankly, far greater were, first, the gags themselves funnier and, second, the narrative stakes at least discernible. But the jokes land only occasionally and even then, at best, are only mildly inventive or slightly amusing. (Ito’s dancing and choreography, for better and for worse and as good as it is, drives a number of the gags; a last-act full-cast dance-and-showdown set to the slinky guitar of Link Wray’s “Rawhide” is fun, but you might no longer be paying much attention by the time it arrives). One has to admire the invention and intention both in duo’s set pieces, and you can indeed trace the influences of the visual conceit of films like Tati’s brilliant Playtime or Keaton’s Sherlock, Jr. in their design. Nothing, though, in The Falling Star ever approaches the heights of dazzling brilliance or sheer daring those pioneers reached, and despite its makers’ ambitions, this film feels, simply, leaden.
That Boris and his cronies bury their heads in the sand while the world around them—the one outside their Falling Star watering-hole—is enmeshed in social turmoil makes for an intriguing subtext to the film’s slight plot. These are characters who don’t fit in the world around them, one where real-life concerns, such as the health-care protests taking place, are genuine conflicts. Boris, Kayoko, Tim, Fiona, and Dom play out their caper with no knowledge or understanding of the world outside their caper, except if and when it impacts them personally. That’s an aesthetic narrative choice Abel and Gordon make, and it’s one with a point, but it also reduces the film’s primary narrative action to pure folly. The Falling Star is a film made by a duo with considerable talent and a handful of clever ideas—I’m glad they are able to keep making what they want, how they want—it’s just hard to have to root this hard for their success. Were The Falling Star a bit more humorous, a bit better paced, a bit more relevant, one wouldn’t have to root at all.
THE FALLING STAR opens August 30 at the Quad Cinema in New York and September 13 at the Laemmle Royal in Los Angeles.
