Bermuda International Film Festival 2009

Belgium has a reputation for dullness (In Bruges) and being invaded by Germans (the Schlieffen Plan), but this delightful film also proves that it’s a place where unlikely love can flourish. Sometimes you just gotta love a crotchety middle-aged woman, especially when she’s played with the kind of salty charm Barbara Serafian injects into Matty, the conflicted heroine of the smart, touching Moscow, Belgium. Working a menial job, raising three kids and waiting for her husband to snap out of his mid-life crisis, Serafian’s Matty is a pissed-off spitfire who spews bile at nearly everybody she meets, particularly eccentric truck driver Johnny (Jurgen Delnaet), who accidentally dings her car. Matty’s verbal assault on Johnny is comic gold that borders on the cruel, which sparks Johnny’s interest despite Matty being 10 years his senior. What follows is a sweet mix of comic romance and family drama that never fully veers into the conventional trappings that typically make such descriptions induce cringes. The two leads have infinite chemistry, and both Serafian and Delnaet deliver charismatic performances that skimp neither on laughs or genuine emotion. The characters register because they feel real, and what we get is a pleasing story of lost souls finding their paths, a warts-and-all look at love, and a cantankerous old broad for the ages.