The Lost Paradise

This may have little of the fantastic frenzy that dominated Malpertuis or Daughters of Darkness, but it's just as peculiar. A Flemish village is threatened by a motorway, whose siting provokes full-scale battle between the nature- loving burgomaster, the boorish but aspiring seed merchant, two dummkopf surveyors, and a crowd of stammering, vacillating, bewildered villagers. Then in strides Willeke van Ammelrooy, stately lady with a past, red hair, red mac and red fingernails, who adds a dose of arty sex to the buffoonery and broad satire. If Kümel hadn't such a heavy hand with everything the mix might have been quite explosive. But it remains one for curio-hunters: there can't be that many ecological-political-sex-comedy-dramas around.