Paradise Lost / Het verloren paradijs (1978)

In a Flemish village, pride and cupidity vie for control, and each of them loses. When the villagers hear that a highway might be built near their village, they perk up – it could be just the thing for their faltering economy. The current mayor has scotched the easiest route, which would take the road through a bird sanctuary he fought to establish. Instead, a few modest houses will be torn down to make way for the road. This is not acceptable to his political opponent, who pulls out all the stops to oppose him on the road issue, in order to defeat him at the polls during the next election.

Very strange movie by Harry Kumel, by far Belgiums most talented director. One wonders what the hell went through Kumels mind when he decided to mix several great, incredible, Visconti-like scenes (e.g. Van Ammelrooy and Van den Berghe by the fireplace, or the scene with Van Ammelrooy in the lake) with awful, overacted and - worst of all - unfunny comedy. In interviews Kumel called this film a satire on the bus-load of (mostly) awful rural films Flemish directors made through the years ('boerenfilms'): though this film IS clearly a satire on these bad movies, the satire part is the most uninteresting part of 'Het Verloren Paradijs' - unless you consider VERY bad film-making as good satire on bad film-making. The dialogs and acting are - just like the film itself - extremely uneven: Willeke Van Ammelrooy is delivering some really great acting here, Hugo Van den Berghe is impeccable and the little boy is OK, but Fred Van Kuyk, Bert André and most of the bit parts are really god-awful. Good camera-work by Ken Hodges.

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