Borderline brilliant, with witty genius, a cult-worthy near-masterpiece in first 60% of film ... 'Brussels by Night' is then sadly ruined by a devastatingly flawed screenplay ending, introducing some totally un-needed themes of gross violence in a cheap, foolish attempt to be a 'profound and important film'.
But the film in its early parts - about 4 troubled characters in Belgium in the early 1980s - is really extraordinary in many ways, with a very light sophisticated touch. Great film-work and use of music, shows how a smart European on a low-budget can totally outclass Hollywood - for at least part of a film.
Not just a great insight into modern secular European life in 'borderland' regions - really not all that different in Europe today - 'Brussels by Night' initially has a story of marginal and seedy urban characters, who despite some petty failings and 'crime', are not that different from common people in general. The film's brilliance is in a Marcel-Proust-like ability to fascinate us with the meaning of small incidents, in life and in sexual relationships. It is totally compelling viewing, up to a point beyond the first half of the film.
If the film had stayed in that sphere, it might have become one of the great cult classics of European cinema verité, life 'as it really is' on the European streets.
The switch back and forth from Dutch to French, the two main characters being bi-lingual (with a little use of English too), are a nice window into European life, where even uneducated, edgy people speak several languages. This is authentic Brussels (officially bi-lingual) and Belgium (60% Dutch-speaking, the rest mostly French-speaking, including most of Brussels).
But the violent themes that get introduced toward the end, are so utterly soiling, that they make you forget how good the movie was in the early parts. Not that it needed a 'happy' ending, but just some more thought as to what to do with the various troubled people in Brussels who so fascinate the viewer ... characters who deserved better than pointlessly shocking, disconnected conclusion scenes.
The film just needed to stay on its early level, a brilliant movie about the small, hugely intriguing things that can compose real life, versus being transformed un-necessarily into a gratuitous video presentation of psychopathic behaviour and horror. Though the violence is in part suggested rather than shown, it is a betrayal of the viewer's initial eager enjoyment of a genius film about the small but vivid components of petty lives.
Hesitate to recommend it, because of the way 'Brussels by Night' disturbs at the end ... I am left with a sense of tragedy, both to see a semi-genius film collapse so disgustingly before its conclusion ... and to realise that a possibly great young European director, had likely damaged his future prospects, by the cheap, awful ending to his brilliantly-begun 'Brussels by Night'.
