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The Worst Film Ever

In truth, there is barely enough story here to make a film.

Great story, amazing characters, superb action, enthralling cinematography. Yes, this is something I am glad I spent money on.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

Until seeing this, I had never seen a belgian film before. I wanted to see it partially because of its nationality and partially because its cover is so stylish that I expected good surprises. In the end, I expected too much without properly informing myself.This film is nothing (and I mean, nothing!) of what it appears to be from the cover. That cover easily made me imagine a movie with space-age and futuristic visuals, a movie about a little boy who is a dreamer and often dreams of flying in space (imagining that was why he was holding an airplane in his hands). Well, in reality only 3 times there are scenes similar to that: early in the film when a space-like background with the title's film written in yellow appears; a ship shows up in a somewhat similar background; and after that only at the end when the same ship (from another angle of sight) appears in the same background.That said, this belgian motion-picture coproduced with France and Germany tells the weird tale of a bitter old man named Thomas (Toto) who looks back in time and laments his course of life. He shares his story through a complicated mosaic of flashbacks together with fantasies about what he wished his life had been.This movie makes use of admirable techniques such as a complex temporal structure combined with many dream sequences and many flashbacks. To make matters more difficult, sometimes the flashbacks flash simultaneously forward and back.Thomas was born around the same time as Alfred and has always envied him. Because he was never happy or lucky, he thinks Alfred stole his life and even believes they were switched at birth after a fire in the nursery.Although confusing and despite the incredible quickness of many shots, it's actually possible to understand well some parts.I see that many people here on IMDb have very positive things to say about this film. I'm sorry, but I have to disagree. I like strange and complex movies, but this one was too much even for my standards.What really shocked me was the disturbing things it contains. For example, Thomas is hungry for revenge and plans to murder Alfred. There is a scene when Thomas's father asks him to see his pretty airplane and the boy attacks him with the toy and the father bleeds. There is a scene when a woman starts bleeding from her head for no apparent reason. There is a child brother and sister in love with each other, they take baths together, sleep together and in one scene she keeps asking him opinions about parts of her body and he even gets to touch her boob. The children plan to burn the neighbor's house down. The girl even suicides by blowing up a house to show how much she loves the boy. The children destroy a statue of Our Lady. When grown up, Toto gets obsessed with another woman just because she looks like the sister who died in the explosion. And the movie displays (twice) a man that has been brutally murdered.Had they done this very (and I mean, very!) differently, and it could have been a great movie.

I gave this film a rating of "1" because of the terrible things it contains. There is near-child pornography, an adolescent brother and sister that are in love with each other and take baths together and sleep together (one scene shows the boy licking the girl's arm), the children plotting to burn the neighbor's house down, an older man fantasizing about stuffing a bottle of pills down a nurse's throat, the two sublings smashing a statue of the Virgin Mary, and the film shows a man that has been suffocated, choked, drowned, and shot. If you liked "The Eighth Day," which was written and directed by the same person, you won't like this. It's disgusting and violent and has perverted sexuality.

Jaco Van Dormael conjures up (he was a magician and a clown) one of those films that because of their formal beauty and intelligent content deserve to be seen more often but are not. The film is full of internal echoes, images that resurface under different contexts, and make you rethink them again and again (dare I say like in Citizen Kane?). As if that were not enough, there are many other resonances to genres and specific films that will make film buffs laugh with excitement: quotations to gangster films, to Hitchcock, to Bunuel, etc. are all there to be discovered and enjoyed. Alan Moore would be smiling at the construction of this beautiful crystal web that is the narrative of this film. See it and rejoice...

The first movie from Belgium director Jaco Van Dormael is pure magic. It's what cinema should always be.I've just seen the movie, for the third time, on TV past midnight yesterday and I couldn't close my eyes. Why ? Because Van Dormael knows how to tell a story. Also, you become very attached to all the character, bad and good one.The cinematography give you the impression that you are dreaming. The camera is so light and the colors are so bright so you know that the imagination of Thomas, the "Toto" from the title, is working very hard to remember exactly what happened in his childhood.If you love a good story with a very interesting plot, this is the one.