‘The Falling Star’: Locarno Review

Dirs/scr: Dominique Abel, Fiona Gordon. Belgium/France. 2023. 98 mins

The well-established deadpan drollery of Belgian couple Dominique Abel and Fiona Gordon gets a fifth feature-length outing in Locarno’s whimsical, fitfully funny opener The Falling Star. An unexpected detour towards film-noir parody from a team who have worked together since the 1980s, the self-consciously daffy tale about bizarro goings on in and around the eponymous Brussels beer bar will doubtless delight devotees of their previous comedies L’Iceberg (2005), Rumba (2008), The Fairy (2011) and Lost In Paris (2016) — all of which enjoyed a healthy measure of international exposure and acclaim.

The semi-anachronistic approach exerts a certain nostalgic charm

This latest enterprise, despite its old-school charm and poise, feels too scattershot to earn Abel and Gordon (who, as usual, write, direct and co-produce, as well as play leading roles) many new admirers. Not for the first time, their material feels somewhat stretched. There is also a nagging sense that their script would be better suited to stage than screen, even taking into account their obvious debts to the likes of Tati, Chaplin and Keaton.

To this list of august influences one can perhaps now add Finnish maestro-of-miniatures Aki Kaurismaki, who has operated in The Falling Star’s lightly-stylised, mainly morose milieu for decades. Indeed, his heavy-drinking Helsinki night-hawks would find themselves very much at home among the unadorned, indigo-hued interior walls of the fictional boozer in which most of the action takes place.

Here, the evidently unchanging routines of barman/landlord Boris (Abel), barmaid Kayoko (Kaori Ito) and phlegmatic doorman Tim (Philippe Martz) are rudely interrupted by the arrival of a vengeance-crazed gunman played by Bruno Romy — Abel and Gordon’s writing-directing collaborator on their first three features. His attempt to shoot Boris proves abortively farcical thanks to a malfunctioning robotic arm, but Boris, whose unassuming exterior turns out to hide a long-ago violent past, is sufficiently spooked to seek a double to take his place. A suitable patsy is found in rapid time via the meek form of Dom (also Abel), a depressive loner separated from his wife Fiona (Gordon) — a private detective — following the tragic death of their only child.

The small ensemble having been thus sketched in deliberately cartoonish terms, their antics, which are often presented as semi-static tableaux via Pascale Marin’s low-key cinematography, then prove to have more in common with the fanciful worlds of Belgium’s beloved comic book artists han modern-day reality. Indeed, with dowdy stylings, and few nods to the digital-dominated 21st century, the action might as well be taking place in the 1980s.

This semi-anachronistic approach does exert a certain nostalgic charm, likewise the unashamedly artificial, lo-fi approach to such matters as back-projection during several car-driving sequences. And there are moments when the mode of kooky, oddball quirkiness delivers exquisitely-crafted gems of knockabout physical humour. A final-reel set-piece in which the bar’s middle-aged staff and denizens launch into an impromptu dance-routine to the raucous rockabilly strains of Link Wray’s ’Raw-Hide’ fulfils its show-stopping function with genial aplomb.

Overall, however, The Falling Star’s belly-laugh hit-rate proves patchy, and the studied air of zaniness occasionally comes across as more infantile than inspired. Scenes reliant on dialogue tend to fall flat, and the storyline, populated as it is by ciphers rather than actual characters, provides only a flimsy narrative framework. Anything resembling storytelling pep only comes in fits and stars, and it’s left to the performers to take up the slack. The madcap scattiness of Ito provides several jolts of energy, while the gawky, lanky Gordon (originally from Australia) consistently proves good value as one of cinema’s least plausible private eyes — much more Olive Oyl than Sam Spade.