Film

Les Convoyeurs Attendent (1999)

Director: Benoît Mariage

Movie review

From Time Out Film Guide

In this deadpan comedy, a lowly small town journalist (Poelvoorde, from Man Bites Dog) decides to improve his family's lot by training up his understandably reluctant teenage son to break the world record for the number of times a door can be opened in 24 hours. At once gently affectionate and wittily unsentimental about the mundane textures of provincial life - the title refers to a wonderful scene involving racing pigeons - it is sometimes incautiously courageous in touching on darker issues than normally find their way into comedy(death, child abuse, loneliness, unwanted pregnancy). Displaying that genuinely quirky originality often found only in Belgian cinema at its best, the film is sometimes so funny it's quite painful to watch.

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