Ranko quietly unrolled his camera

In collecting references to cinema in African novels I’m usually dealing with the experience of going to the movies or how cinema is perceived as a social or cultural force. The reference in Bessie Head’s Maru (1971) is different, although it is typical of the novel’s unsettling mixture of metaphor and magic realism.

Maru is a powerful figure in the village, influencing events with the help of a spy called Ranko who “had a camera inside his brain” able to take pictures “including the minutest detail”. Initially I read this as a stills camera, but then Head writes about Ranko “unrolling” his camera. Several pages on, it becomes clear that there is movement in Ranko’s gift:In contrast to this cinematic spy, the young woman over whom Maru and his friend Moleka are fighting is an artist. First she sketches from life, then she paints from dreams.

Belgian cinema in March and April

Four Belgian films arrived on local screens around Easter: two populist local comedies, one provocation and a grass-roots retro thriller. None of them have travelled much internationally, mostly with good reason. The one that deserves better is Vincent Lannoo’s Au nom du fils, a scathing satire on sexual abuse and the Church.

Lannoo has known the long gaps between projects that often afflict Belgian directors, with a five-year silence after his second feature, Ordinary Man (2005). But now he is on a roll, with both productivity and quality rising. Bloodsucking mockumentary Vampires (2010) was funny but looked cheap, while Little Glory (2011) succeeded so well in aping US indie drama that it had no voice of its own.

In contrast, Au nom du fils is polished and spends time building its story, so that when the more outrageous punches land they are felt. Some of the new-found smoothness may be down to co-writer Philippe Falardeau (Oscar nominated for directing Monsieur Lazhar), but it could equally be a sign of Lannoo’s growing experience.

The plot centres on Elisabeth (Astrid Whettnall), the earnest host of a Christian radio phone-in show, who learns the hard way how far the Church will go to protect its priests from accusations of sexual abuse. Traumatised, she takes matters into her own hands. The slowly building tension is released in a series of blackly comic and sometimes ultraviolent set pieces. These are best experienced without prior warning, so I’ll say no more.

Une chanson pour ma mère has a much safer sense of humour and is aimed at a broader audience. Directed by Belgian first-timer Joël Franka, the financing means it presents as a majority French co-production, with a cast designed to register on both sides of the border: Sylvie Testud, Patrick Timsit and Guy Lecluyse from over there, Fabrizio Rongione and the increasingly busy Sam Louwyck from over here.

They play the estranged members of an Ardennes farming family, reunited by the mother’s terminal illness. Now bed-ridden, the mother (Michèle Moretti) is fading fast and will not now be able to fulfil her life-long ambition of seeing French singer Dave perform in the flesh. Since the star (now fading) is touring small towns in region, the family decides to ask him to come to their mother’s bedside. When that doesn’t work, they take more drastic steps.

Rather like Johnny Hallyday in Jean-Philippe and Jean-Claude Van Damme in JCVD, part of the humour comes from Dave playing himself and being self-deprecating about his star status. If, like me, you don’t know who Dave is in the first place this falls a little flat. Even if you do know him and his French TV adverts for Dutch cheese, I suspect it is not exactly hilarious.

That said, Dave does look a little like a wizened Klaus Kinski, which passed the time for me, particularly during a scene where the Werner Herzog-ish Louwyck is trying to coax him out of a Smart car. Visual gags of this kind — Sam Louwyck as a monk under a vow of silence, Sylvie Testud in a Smurf mask — make up the film’s few memorable moments.

The most helpful clue to the pedigree of Une chanson pour ma mère is the co-writing credit given to Benoît Mariage, best known for underdog comedies with Benoît Poelvoorde such as Les Convoyeurs attendent and Cowboy. Franka’s film has the same flavour, describing grand gestures from people living disappointed lives. They may fail, but in the process they learn the value of what they have. That usually means family, and Une chanson pour ma mère falls into line with a particularly tiresome tear-jerking ending.

A more distracting association is that the plot bears a passing resemblance to Calvaire, Fabrice Du Welz’s striking horror film about a small-time entertainer touring the Ardennes who is taken prisoner and put through a grisly ordeal by a farmer. Du Weltz is thanked in the credits, presumably for being a good sport.

The other populist comedy is Bingo, about a staid older couple whose comfortable suburban life is shattered when the vulgar lower classes move in next door. Directed by Rudi Van Den Bossche, until now a specialist in serial kid pix, this is the first movie from the Echt Antwaarps Teater. Over the past 30 years, this Antwerp theatre group has been turning out populist comedy on stage and occasionally on Flemish TV, giving it a following that allowed this big screen treatment to go into production without public subsidy (this is not as rare in Belgium as it once was, but it is still unusual).

At this stage I can’t comment on the results. The film only screened briefly in Brussels, without subtitles to help locals with the Antwerp accent. Clearly I’ll need to catch it on home ground, if it sticks around long enough.

Fat Cat is a Brussels film and so was easier for me to read. It concerns a young safe-breaker, Enzo (Christophe Piette), who is hired to take part in a robbery intended to recover incriminating evidence being used in a turf war between property developers. The job feels bad from the start and delays make Enzo increasingly uneasy. As he waits in the Fat Cat bar for the green light, he tries to work out whether he is the fall guy.

The film was shot in the neighbourhood around Gare du Midi, which has been aggressively redeveloped in recent years into office and retail space. Most of the audience for the film’s short run at the Nova Cinema would have been aware of this, either through grassroots campaigns in favour of displaced residents or militant documentaries about their plight. Seeing that world turned into a neo-noir with a fat, funky soundtrack was a lot of fun, but if you’re not in the know I expect the film’s visibly low-budget and creaky acting are harder to forgive.

I also suspect that directors Patricia Gélise and Nicolas Deschuyteneer, here making their second feature, respect their sources too much. Fat Cat feels like the work of fans rather than auteurs, content to pay homage to film noir rather than take its conventions and transform them.