Following last year’s FF entry Left Bank, this is part two in writer/director’s Pieter Van Hees planned trilogy called “Anatomy of Love and Pain” – and yup, the two states are linked for a reason.
When an on-the-job accident knocks out professional stuntman and amateur sad sack Diego (the terrific Wim Helsen, who could pass for Jemaine Clement’s Belgian second cousin), he wakes up in the hospital with a swingin’ new personality – Tony TNT, he wants to be called now. His doctor, the comely but buttoned-down Jaana (Kristine Van Pellicom), diagnoses the mood shift as “frontal syndrome” and wants to operate. But for Tony, life – sans inhibitions – just started to get good, and he goes at it (and his doctor) with gusto, as does Van Hees’s stylish film: The first half is all brainy fun and joyful abandon.
But, as is warned in the film’s sixth chapter title, “What Goes Up,” Tony’s giddy joie de vivre morphs into something more monstrous, and again, the film takes the lead from its lead: It doesn’t crash like Tony, but it runs out of gas, for sure. Still, there’s an awful lot to like here, and, one suspects, a lot more to see from Van Hees.
Dirty Mind screens Sunday, Sept. 27, at 6:45pm and Thursday, Oct. 1, at 4pm.
This article appears in September 25 • 2009.
