driesvd62

As I only started to watch this enjoyable piece of TV drama when it was already more than halfway, I can't say very much about its contents. But I admired the strong acting of both the protagonists, Kevin Whateley and Richard Briers. Briers was maybe a little bit too "young" for his part and sometimes tended to slightly overdo things. But in general, it's becoming rare to watch TV drama of this quality on Flemish television nowadays. Before I started watching this, I had been sleeping on my couch, but I was immediately woken up and grabbed by the story. The climax the film was working to succeeded completely. It's a work that needs to be done by authentic top-class actors, which was really the case here.

The acting wasn't great, the story was full of simplistic turns and transparent characters. It's about the repercussions of the struggle between right-wing Flemish block voters on the one side and the Moroccon people living in the Belgian city Antwerp on the other side. Is it a political analysis ? Is it some kind of Belgian West Side Story or modern Romeo and Juliet ? The film just isn't strong enough to answer both questions (supposing those were the director's questions, too). Still, some of the scenes could function as a kind of Ken Loach film, set in Antwerp. After all, this city has been the starting point of the extremist right-wing Flemish Block party and is struggling with a lot of problems and tensions between different populations and cultures. It's very difficult to make a film about this situation, and this one isn't successful, unfortunately. Still, it's telling a story about a very real and complicated situation in present-day Belgium. The few foreign viewers watching should try and enjoy it and realise it's not the actual film that is important but the social dividing lines behind it that haunt Belgium, a 10 million people country, in the 2000s

Dries Van Dongen