The movie begins with images of speed and slowness. The first shots show a rushing train, followed by a harvester moving gradually toward a truck that's standing still in the middle of a field. The next scene adds a psychological dimension to the contrast between fast and slow. One main character (nobody in the movie has a name) is a telecommuter who doesn't show up for work even though he works from home, and he's going to get fired if he doesn't walk through the boss's door in half an hour. Tooling down the highway in his car, it looks like he'll save his job - until he finds himself behind that sluggish harvester, now on the open road and driven by a neighbor with whom he's just had a shouting match. Switching from his car to a motorbike, he angrily hunts down the driver and attacks him.
But the fight is over in a flash. A faulty mechanism brings down a crushing metal component from the harvester, landing on both combatants and paralyzing them from the waist down. Released from the hospital, they are just as ill tempered as they were before, but now they have two things in common. One is the nature of their nearly identical injuries. The other is a burning desire for revenge against Aaltra, the Finnish company that made the harvester. The men head immediately for Finland, determined to pocket millions of Euros for the damages they've sustained. The only thing slowing them down is a complete lack of legal savvy, decent manners, and good sense. And also money, especially after they drink themselves into oblivion one night and get robbed of everything they have.
What's funny about all this? Not the disabilities of the main characters, obviously, although you have to admit they caused the awful accident themselves. What makes Aaltra wryly humorous is the nuanced comic acting by Benoît Delépine and Gustave K/vern, who play the office guy and the agriculture guy, respectively. They also wrote and directed the 2004 film, which was their first theatrical feature (and first venture as directors) after years of writing French television episodes together. (For the record, Gustave K/vern's name is often given as Gustave de Kervern, but he uses K/vern in the credits of Aaltra.)
It's clear from the start of Aaltra that Delépine and K/vern are intimately familiar with each other's strengths and abilities, and they've crafted the film's visual and verbal elements in ways that capitalize on their talents to the max. Their style is too nutty to be called understated or subtle, but it couldn't be more different from the high-octane antics of a Jim Carrey or a Seth Rogen, who generally create their comedy through large-scale commotions rather than carefully chosen details. Delépine and K/vern are more visually oriented as well, using words only when the situation demands it. In this respect they're similar to some of the great silent-film comedians, especially the truly eccentric ones like Harry Langdon, and to Jacques Tati and his protégé Pierre Étaix, who brought the spirit of silent-screen comedy to exquisitely made modern films. At times Delépine and K/vern also remind me of Ernie Kovacs, who brought a touch of visual genius to American TV in the 1950s and early '60s.
Aaltra is at its boldest in scenes where it appears that regular people are brought into the picture, lending a touch of Sacha Baron Cohen's Borat (2006) to the tale. You may feel like squirming when K/vern's character unsuccessfully begs from and then crazily explodes at an innocent passerby who doesn't know about the camera. But the moment reveals a squirm-inducing reality about modern life, which is ultimately the point of the movie. Like films by Luis Buñuel, the great Spanish surrealist, Aaltra pokes huge holes in the superficial sensitivity and made-to-order sympathy peddled by most movies about people who are disadvantaged or down and out. Delépine and K/vern inflict some harsh misadventures on their hapless characters, but the real culprit is society itself, which makes living with disabilities a lot harder than it ought to be.
Critics have likened Aaltra to carnivalesque films by Federico Fellini and the pitch-dark comedies of Marco Ferreri, and its mischievously twisted sense of humor reminded me a little of the outrageous Belgian film Man Bites Dog (1992) even before I spotted one of that picture's three creators, Benoît Poelvoorde, in the small role of a fan at the Namur Grand Prix motocross event. The real-life motocross champion Stefan Everts also appears, playing himself in a very funny episode where he's hoodwinked on his own turf by K/vern's character, who manages to abscond with his one-of-a-kind racing bike. Delépine and K/vern save my favorite cameo performance for last, enlisting Finland's all-time greatest filmmaker, Aki Kaurismäki, to play the Finnish manufacturer of the Aaltra harvester. Kaurismäki is the perfect actor for the part.
Delépine hails from France and K/vern is from Mauritius, and perhaps their different national origins have something to do with their offbeat chemistry as writers, directors, and actors. As a Belgian-French coproduction, Aaltra is a reminder that France remains a major creative hub of world cinema and that Belgium, although less celebrated in this area, has one of Europe's most enterprising and adventurous film industries, cultivating such audacious talents as Chantal Akerman, Henri Storck, Jaco Van Dormael, Dominique Deruddere, Thierry Zéno, Nic Balthazar, the amazing animator Raoul Servais, the brilliant brothers Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne, and the trio who wrote, directed, and starred in Man Bites Dog. Delépine and K/vern work mainly in France, but they have the all-stops-out inventiveness that distinguishes the most notable Belgian cinema too. Aaltra is a debut film to remember.
Directors: Benoît Delépine and Gustave K/vern
Producers: Guillaume Malandrin, Vincent Tavier
Screenplay: Benoît Delépine and Gustave K/vern
Cinematographer: Hugues Poulain
Film Editing: Anne-Laure Guégan
Art Direction: Isabelle Girard
Music: Les Wampas
With: Benoît Delépine, Gustave K/vern, Benoît Poelvoorde, Aki Kaurismäki
BW-90m.
by David Sterritt
