On Screen

As someone who knew basically nothing about Belgium—hell, as
someone with virtually no intellectual curiosity about
Belgium—here is what I’ve learned about the country by watching
Moscow, Belgium. Great stretches of Belgium are as ugly as the United
States, with giant apartment towers and highway overpasses. Many
lower-middle-class Belgians live quiet lives making bad decisions, the
same as many of us. And many of those bad decisions have to do with the
messy business of falling in love.

Matty (Barbara Sarafian, weary and strong) is a mother of three
whose husband, currently enthralled by a midlife crisis, is taking a
younger woman out for a relationship test drive. As she waits patiently
for her husband to decide whether he wants to come back to her or not,
Matty accidentally backs her car into (or is struck by) a truck driven
by a young man named Johnny (Jurgen Delnaet, subtle and sublime). At
first the pair lock horns, but soon they’re out on a date and fumbling
together in the cab of Johnny’s truck.

Matty and Johnny are not the sort of people you expect to see in a
foreign film. They’re positively blue-collar, delightfully so. Matty
cooks serviceable food for her kids and works in a boring postal job.
Johnny has a tawdry past, lives with his mom, and dreams of moving to
Italy. He can’t help but embarrass himself repeatedly, and you can tell
that he imagines himself as some sort of John Cusack figure in a
romantic comedy, but the truth is that he’s something much more small
and needy and fragile. The viewer might not agree with the choices
Johnny and Matty make as they careen off each other’s delicate
emotional states, but the choices feel real. These characters are
recognizable, and loveable, in a way that American films never can
capture.