Eldorado

Bleak but Heartfelt
ELDORADO is a road movie with a difference; the humor's subtle here, the heart's subterranean, the little lessons from life usually learned in this kind of mismatched buddy flick muted, at best. But writer/director/star Bouli Lanners knows what he's about, and his film gets under your skin and stays there for days. Haunting images, excellent acting, memorable soundtrack. ELDORADO richly deserved the honor it took at Cannes, and is highly recommended to all adventurous fans of foreign films.

Two strangers meet and bond...
A man drives home and discovers that his house is broken into by a scared drug addict looking for money to use for a busride back to his parents' home in the country. After seeing that the intruder is unarmed and scared, he lets him relax and volunteers to drive him back to his parents' home the next day. Why? Because the older man connects with the younger intruder. What keeps viewers watching is why.

Both men have secrets they are hiding. Both reveal them during the course of the movie.

The plot of this movie takes place "along the road," where they meet every imaginable flawed character: a car collector, a nudist, bikers and drug pushers. Is anyone normal? The older man's hair is never combed and he's wearing an oil-stained mechanic's overalls. The younger man never takes off his old cap.

Most of the conversation between the men takes place in the older man's (Yvan, played by Bouli Lanners who also directs this movie) car or at rest stops...

EVERYONE HAS A DENT
A young junkie, trying to quit breaks into the home of Yvan (Bouli Lanners). Through a series of circumstances Tvan agrees to give his new acquittance (Fabrice Adde) a lift home, rather than have him use that great European public transportation. They take off in his 1979 Chevrolet wagon toward the border (in Belgium, really how far can anything be from the border). The road trip has several stops along the way to peak your interest.

The story tells us that none of us are perfect. There is good and bad in all of us and that when we are a person in need, we can overlook a lot. You need to nurture your relationships with family. Mildly humorous. The road trip sound track is a steel guitar you might expect from some grindhouse. I was bored with most of the film and tiresome dialouge. The car is the metaphor.

F-bomb, no sex, full frontal male nudity.

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