Les Convoyeurs attendent
France/Belgium/Switzerland 1999
Reviewed by Elizabeth Merriman
Synopsis
Our synopses give away the plot in full, including surprise twists.
Roger Closset lives in a Belgian industrial town with his wife Madeleine, teenage son Michel and eight-year-old daughter Luise. A photographer on the local newspaper, Roger rides around on his moped to record anything from car crashes to freak hailstorms. He becomes obsessed with winning a car in a record-breaking competition. To this end, he bullies Michel to tackle the record for opening and closing a door over 24 hours. Roger hires an acquaintance named Richard as Michel's trainer. Luise befriends the family's shy neighbour Félix, who keeps racing pigeons, while Michel starts seeing Jocelyne.
During the gala competition event, Michel fails in his attempt through exhaustion. A furious Roger berates him. Michel drives the prize car out of the hall and crashes it. The distraught family gathers round his hospital bed. While lying in a coma, Michel is married to the pregnant Jocelyne. Roger and Richard engage in a series of ventures to wake Michel, including bringing an Elvis impersonator to his bedside. Roger asks Félix to help sell the family silver to pay the hospital bills. Instead Félix sells his champion bird. Michel eventually makes a sudden recovery and the friends and family celebrate the new millennium.
Review
Les Convoyeurs attendent's director Benoît Mariage used to work as a newspaper photographer before becoming a documentary-maker. With this background, you might expect him to make a pseudo-documentary or another example of the kind of staunch social realism popular in Francophone countries recently (something, perhaps, like Rosetta) for his first full-length feature. Instead, Les Convoyeurs - a close study of a bullying father and of dysfunctional family life - is a carefully crafted and surprisingly cohesive amalgam of comedy, melodrama, grit and the wackily bizarre (Mariage describes the film's stranger tendencies as "a kind of hyperrealism"), a melange which makes it highly enjoyable viewing.
The film opens ironically with a class of children learning by rote a poem that starts, "My darling daddy". The central figure of Roger, an ambitious father determined to get his son to set a record for opening and closing a door over 24 hours, repeatedly tests this ideal and his demands end up indirectly putting his son Michel in a coma. A more banal film would have made Roger into an intolerable monster, but through Benoît Poelvoorde's beautifully balanced performance he becomes something far more complex than even the chilling serial killer he played in Man Bites Dog. Beneath Roger's vileness and manic energy, Poelvoorde allows glimpses to poke through of the character's confusion, his need for affection, recognition and status. Given Roger's boorish behaviour and the fact that the mise en scène generally favours the downmarket and shoddy, you would expect the film to be depressing. It rains a lot on this ugly industrial landscape. Roger, a newspaper photographer, listens to police radio and rushes off to crash scenes on his moped, his daughter Luise riding pillion. Michel's wedding in hospital to his pregnant girlfriend Jocelyne is a particularly gloomy affair: he's comatose; she's in a hired dress; the families travel there by bus.
Remarkably, the residual impression is pretty life- (and family-life-) affirming, and not just because of the upbeat ending. The glorious black-and-white photography, combined with a certain visual quirkiness, effects a poetic transcendence on the scruffy landscape. In one scene, Luise trudges across a slagheap-filled frame carrying a scavenged Yves Saint-Laurent poster of a glamorous woman with the caption "in love again" printed across it. Such near-gratuitous oddness lightens things. Les Convoyeurs attendent never takes itself too seriously, and has a winning line in knowing filmic self-deprecation: Michel's hobby of spotting continuity errors - his local radio slot is called Cinema's Lies - is telling. It would be tempting to class this film with other Francophone family comedies such as Étienne Chatiliez's Tatie Danielle and Le Bonheur est dans le pré), but ultimately, like Roger, it's in its own captivating little world.
Credits
- Director
- Benoît Mariage
- Scenario/Adaptation/
- Dialogue
- Benoît Mariage
- Director of Photography/
- Camera Operator
- Philippe Guilbert
- Editor
- Philippe Bourgueil
- Art Director
- Chris Cornil
- Music
- Stéphane Huguenin
- Yves Sanna
- ©K-Star/K2/RTBF/CAB Productions/SSR
- Production Companies
- A production of K-Star, with the participation of Canal+, Centre National de la Cinématographie (France), K2, RTBF
- (Télévision Belge), with the aid of Centre du Cinéma et de l'audiovisuel de la
- Communauté française de Belgique (Belgium), CAB Productions, la Télévision Suisse Romande (TSR), l'office Fédéral de la Culture (Switzerland)
- With the aid of Télédistributeurs Wallons,
- with the collaboration of Canal C, with the support of Loterie Nationale
- Supported by Eurimages
- Dominique Janne presents a film by Benoît Mariage
- Executive Producer
- K2
- Associate Producers
- RTBF:
- Arlette Zylberberg
- CAB Productions:
- Jean-Louis Porchet
- Production Co-ordinator
- Isabelle Molhant
- Production Manager
- Françoise Hoste
- Unit Production Managers
- Benoît Bertuzzo
- Marc Dalmans
- Assistant Directors
- Boris van Gils
- Marco Baurepaire
- Christophe Fontaine
- Script Supervisor
- Augusta Riva
- Casting
- Patrick Hella
- Scenario/Adaptation/
- Dialogue Collaborators
- Emmanuelle Bada
- Jean-Luc Seigle
- Helicopter Photography
- Flying Cam
- Héli Volcan Services
- 2nd Camera
- Stunts:
- Jean-François Hensgens
- Anne-Françoise Bersou
- Steadicam
- Jan Rubben
- Special Effects
- Olivier de Laveleye
- Landscape Gardener
- Marc Brunin
- Costumes
- Anne Fournier
- Make-up/Hairdressers
- Françoise Joset
- Michèle Constantinidès
- Titles
- Aniway
- Musicians
- Guitars:
- Claude Engel
- Accordion:
- Fred Gaillardet
- Saxophone:
- Pierre Holassian
- Piano:
- Stéphane Huguenin
- Bass:
- Christian Padovan
- Drums:
- Yves Sanna
- Music Supervisor
- Grand Large Music
- France Tarpinian
- Music Recorder/Mixer
- Hervé Marignac
- Soundtrack
- "Take My Hands" by Stéphane Huguenin, Yves Sanna, performed by Stéphane Huguenin;
- "Majorettes and Percussions" by La Groupe des Percussions d'Auvelais; "Fanfare" by Les Volontaires
- Sound
- Olivier Hespel
- Mixer
- Philippe Baudhuin
- Post-sync
- Jo Masset
- Sound Editors
- Anne Frey
- Philippe Bluard
- Sound Effects
- Philippe van Leer
- Pigeon Raising Consultants
- Richard Parmentier
- Jos Bermils
- Gustave Gueulton
- Jules Botilde
- Jules Minne
- Désiré Minne
- Jean Adnet
- Ivan Eeckhout
- Franky Deblecque
- Marc Marchand
- Jean-Philippe Deprince
- Rudy Lefevre
- Michel Demoulin
- Cast
- Benoît Poelvoorde
- Roger Closset, father
- Morgane Simon
- Luise Closset, daughter
- Bouli Lanners
- Richard, coach
- Dominique Baeyens
- Madeleine Closset, mother
- Philippe Grand'henry
- Félix
- Jean-François Devigne
- Michel Closset, son
- Lisa Lacroix
- Jocelyne Taminiaux
- Philippe Nahon
- overseer
- Edith Le Merdy
- Edith, Jocelyne's mother
- Patrick Audin
- Patrick, Jocelyne's father
- Claude Caudron
- schoolteacher
- Simone Tasiaux
- radio announcer
- Renaud Rutten
- pushy pigeon raiser
- Martin Viot
- Joshua Noppe
- Marianne Brizi
- Antoine Berger
- Aurélien Viot
- children on the empty lot
- Benjamin Minne
- pupil
- Georges Taminiaux
- station master
- Francine Taminiaux
- station master's wife
- Jean-Marie Hubot
- policeman
- Henri Bruwier
- Francine Bruwier
- cheese sellers
- Boris Humblet
- Boris, popcorn pupil
- Christian Vleminckx
- Jérémie Segers
- Antoine Roisin
- Kévin Boremans
- teenagers at carnival
- Sabrina de Baets
- lead drum majorette
- Philippe Résimont
- MC
- René van Loo
- bailiff
- Raymond Laverdisse
- farmer
- Germaine Puillon
- burgomaster
- Mike Steven
- 'Elvis'
- Isabel Sanchez
- nurse
- Philippe Berger
- Marcel Toussaint
- Christian Dochain
- Jacques Boigelot
- Pierre Leonard
- pigeon raisers
- Joël Gilles
- postman
- Jean Remotte
- ringer
- Jean-Claude Jassogne
- Mister Walloon
- Jeanine Mencaccini
- Mister Walloon's mother
- Benoît Bertuzzo
- driver of the Lada
- Claude Goederd
- Jacques Verrees
- policemen at accident
- Roger de Looz
- driver of pick-up
- Marc Rase
- assistant overseer
- Erika
- accordionist
- Frédéric Dailly
- guitarist
- Robert Heyman
- drummer
- Patrick Duquenoy
- keyboard
- Annie Loris
- saxophonist
- Frédéric Coppens
- watchman
- Kashmira Wojewoda
- pigeon raisers' secretary
- Pol Lombeau
- photographer
- Serge Munster
- Pascal Medot
- Augusta Chif
- Nancy Massart
- neighbours
- Certificate
- Distributor
- Artificial Eye Film Company
- tbc feet
- tbc minutes
- Dolby digital
- Black and White
- Subtitles