02/02/2022 - The unclassifiable and iconoclastic artist, filmmaker, poet provocateur and agitator is offering up the 3rd instalment of his cinematic autobiography which is deeply rooted in Belgium

(© Aurore Engelen)

We met with the unclassifiable and iconoclastic Belgian artist, filmmaker, poet provocateur and agitator Jan Bucquoy on the occasion of the Belgian release of his latest film, The Last Temptation of the Belgians [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Jan Bucquoy
film profile], which is the 3rd instalment of his cinematic autobiography and is deeply rooted in Belgium.

Cineuropa: What is the film about, in a few words?
Jan Bucquoy: It’s the story of a father and his daughter. His daughter wants to take her own life and he tries to dissuade her by stressing that if she tries to do something with her life and make plans, it might be fun.

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Your lead actor Wim Willaert describes the film as a tragic comedy or a funny tragedy. How would you describe it?
Personally, I think it’s a crowd-pleaser which can be read on various levels. It has lots of literary and cinematic references, but it also tells a very personal story which plays on our emotions. Life is tragic: we start out young and beautiful, then we get sick, we grow old and, eventually, we die. It’s not the best state of affairs. So how do we get by? I think humour is important to our survival. It acts as a counter-attack against our tragic fate.

Are autobiographies an obvious choice for you?
I’d describe them as false autobiographies, tinged with a certain realism, although film does allow for anything. The performative power of language permits anything and everything. That’s the strength of voiceovers, which I really enjoy using; they establish a pact with the audience. I’ve tried to make films without voiceovers, but I’m a huge fan of them; they create complicity with the viewer and allow me to write from the perspective of “I”. In this instance, the voiceover is a double one: it’s a dialogue between the father and his daughter. Ideally, I would have had the film as a black screen with voiceovers. Strangely enough, my producers wouldn’t agree to it, but it could have been interesting (laughter). This dialogue formed the basis of the film, an utterly pure film. That’s what I wrote first of all, and that’s what we filmed first, too.

But isn’t it challenging to re-enact real life?
Yes, there’s a level of truth which isn’t always easy to pin down, but it’s also a way of not taking people for fools. In The Last Temptation of the Belgians, I filmed my characters on a theatre stage. The idea is that viewers accept the situation. Clearly, it’s not really me, and it’s not really my daughter. But I tell stories in the first person, and I try to convey emotions.

There are 25 years separating Camping Cosmos from The Last Temptation of the Belgians; why did you feel the desire and need to make this film?
I’ve done a lot of different things since Camping Cosmos. New technologies arrived on the scene, and I wanted to try other things. I dipped my toe in the world of experimental film; it made everything lighter. In 1958, Alexandre Astruc was already talking about Bic cinema, saying that, one day, we’d be able to make films in the same way that we write.

When I decided to make a more traditional feature film and was faced with funding and distribution issues, I knocked on various doors in Luxembourg and Germany, but it was all very complicated. I decided to do everything in Belgium, with a tiny budget and in a more artisanal style. I’d have enough to pay people with, but not much else. I turned to one particular producer, Stenola, who forced me to develop a disciplined approach, which I’d never had when producing my own work. This discipline, these constraints and the low budget were a blessing as well as a curse: you choose to make the best of them, or the worst.

Why did you bring the character of Jan Bucquoy back to life?
From the very beginning, I’ve been telling my life story, but ultimately, it’s also other people’s lives that I’m exploring. We all experience the same things, to a lesser or greater degree, so I may as well use “I”.

And I chose to play the typical Belgian too, as people assume I will. That’s how I’m seen abroad, it makes people smile. It’s no coincidence that I wrote a book called La Vie est belge [trans. Life is Belgian]; clearly, I play on it. I like to help put it on the map, this place like nowhere else called Belgium.

(Translated from French)