To hear the sentence “I am an antisemite” said in the manner of someone sharing their birth sign is a rare reality check in Frank Van Passel’s fanciful love story.
Set in Brussels in May 1940 as Germany prepares to invade, Belgian writer director Fran Van Passel’s fictional but also unbelievable love story centres on radio sound engineer Berre Meulemans (Jef Hellemans) and Vienesse refugee Elza Friedmann (Femke Vanhove).
Both arrive in the city on the same train and after finding their lodgings – he with his aunt and she with her nervous father and sister – Berre and Elza soon meet again when they apply for jobs at the national radio station.
Fearless Elza is taken on as an actress and Berre as an intern in the sound department run by the irascible Pierre Polak (a deadpan Koen De Bouw).
Passel’s film conveys the impossibility of being Jewish in Brussels even before the Germans invaded. Laws declaring refugees – AKAJews – to be dangerous aliens made working legally impossible. The place was also brimful of fascists. One is Elza’s fellow actor, a dapper leading. He is also the one who displays his antisemitism like a badge of honour.
Despite all this pressure, and against the wishes of her fearful father who warns her not to squander their anonymity, Elza determinedly makes her mark as an actor, while Berre – a sort of sound savant who can even hear a tear drop landing in a bowl of soup – develops cutting-edge techniques as a foley artist providing sound effects for the plays in which which Elza acts.
Passel’s film simultaneously wants to be a historical drama, a love story and a fantastical meditation on the mysteries of sound.
Dramatically the film has its moments such as when Elza and Berre’s bad tempered boss each in their own way confront the antisemitism that is ruining their lives. But the romance manifests as emotionally childish and when Berrre is in his aural element sound waves are visualised as green fumes that waft around the listener like a toxic pong from an open sewer.
A bit like the painted cityscapes against which Berre records the nighttime thrum of Brussels from his aunt’s roof, there is little that convinces.
UKJFF screening, Nov 7 Phoenix N12
To get more from Life, click here to sign up for our free Life newsletter.