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Michel (Jérôme Kircher) was always a bit of a momma's boy, so when
mom (Bernadette Lafont) dies, it's hard for him to let go, and he has
multiple visions of her coming back, even though he has seen her die and
being cremated - and to be quite fair, Michel knows his visions are just
dreams or hallucinations, nothing more, after all he's a reasonable man.
After half a year or so, the visions have stopped, too, and he decides to
move on - which is when he meets mom, very much alive, in Belleville of
all places, a small town she has always hated. Thing is, this encoutner
with mom is not a vision, it's very real, and she even invites him over to
her place - and what's even more inexplicable, her place does really
exist, and obviously life after death is neither going ot heaven (or hell)
or being reincarnated but just moving to Belleville. Hardly surprisingly,
Michel can't make heads or tails of the story, especially since mom seems
to evade certain questions, but he also can't deny that what's happening
here is all too real. Eventually, mom invites Michel to a social
gathering (of the dead), where he meets his one true love again, Sonya
(Mélissandre Meertens), who has left him 15 years ago ... and as happy as
he is to meet her again, he has to realize that she's also dead - but she
still loves him. Eventually, she leads him to a place where she drugs him
and ... well, even he doesn't know if she killed him as well when he wakes
up again, but from now on, the dead treat him as one of their own, and his
biggest problem seems to be that his mom calls him every day at work -
which is somewhat embarrassing for a 40-year-old, especially considering
his mom has died months ago. So ok, this featurette doesn't make all
that much sense - but somehow it doesn't even have to, a film that
features a line of dialogue like "Do you mean to tell me dying means
moving to Belleville?" is charming almost by definition. And this
line also perfectly mirrors the absurdity of the film's plot, an
absurdity that makes it perfectly alright that many questions are left
unanswered, subplots lead to nowhere, and narrative threads don't
always help the main narrative. So ok, this film might be a collection of
good (and slightly macabre) ideas rather than a film following a
well-conceived narrative, but then again (and I repeat myself) it's also
perfectly charming in a morbid way.
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find Le Livre des Morts de Belleville at adultvideouniverse.com
