The Broken Circle Breakdown (2012)

The Broken Circle Breakdown is a 2012 Belgian film about the relationship between a tattoo artist, Elise, and the leader of a bluegrass band, Didier. The film charts the formation and disintegration of the couple's relationship, centring on the loss of their young daughter, Maybelle, to cancer. Moving in an elliptical fashion between past and present, the story of this family unfolds. We are witness to joy and heartbreak, tenderness and animosity. Elise and Didier, brought together by an unexpected pregnancy, ultimately break apart, unable to reconcile the circumstance of their daughter's death. Unwilling to accept Maybelle's passing, Elise holds out hope in spiritual sources, believing Maybelle may be reincarnated as a small bird. Didier's torment is political, as he rages against Bush Jr.s vetoing of a bill to approve stem-cell research, blaming the religious right for the inability to save Maybelle's life. Soon, he transfers this anger onto Elise, viewing her belief in reincarnation as a similar type of religious fanaticism. They split apart, Elise ultimately taking her own life. Finally, in the wake of tragedy, Didier relents and accepts Elise's view of the afterlife, affirming her right to belief.

The Broken Circle Breakdown, a nominee for an Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film in 2013, is a finely constructed, if somewhat derivative, realist film. The film works for its fine craftsmanship and the excellent leading performances of Johan Heldenbergh (who also co-wrote the play on which the film is based) and Veerle Baetens. Heldenbergh and Baetens deliver authentic, understated performances; Heldenbergh in particular bringing a stunning kind of sensitivity to his role (made more impressive for its contrast to his large, lank appearance). The intimate believability of Elise and Didier's relationship creates the necessary height from which to affect a crushing fall when they are torn apart.

Despite the film's quality construction and the excellent work of Baetens and Heldenbergh, The Broken Circle Breakdown suffers from a feeling of cinematic deja vu. At various times it felt the film was simply re-hashing the essence of several zeitgeist-y films of the past decade. The most obvious touchstone is 2010's excellent Ryan Gosling and Michelle Williams drama, Blue Valentine. Similarly paralleling the formation and dissolution of a young couple's relationship, Blue Valentine evokes the same tone of painful nostalgia, contrasting the thrill and joy of new love, with the dull pain of experience, tragedy, and time. The Tree of Life is another film that comes to mind when watching The Broken Circle Breakdown. The central conceit of a child's death, and the catastrophic effect this has on families and individuals, ties both of these films together, as does their dreamy, naturalistic style. The connection to these films is not damning in and of itself, many films share thematic or stylistic parallels, however it spoke to me of a lack of innovation, a sense that this film, so enchanting in the first half, kind of runs out of steam as it approaches the finish line. The beginning of this film felt genuinely fresh; interesting characters, an interesting world, and, with the sickness of their daughter, an interesting conundrum. However, when the daughter reaches her terminal point (about mid-way through the film), the film seemed to deflate slightly, lowering itself to the somewhat predictable tragedy in the end. It may be that the daughter's death occurs, for me, too soon - resolving a central issue ( if not THE central issue) with half the film yet to happen. The first half succeeds for the tension between the unbridled passion of the beginning of their relationship, and the happiness they feel with the birth of the daughter, contrasted with the horror and uncertainty at watching a young child become more and more sick. The daughter's death never seemed like a foregone conclusion, yet when it does happen, the rest of the film kind of seemed destined for the same predictable type of outcome. Nevertheless, despite feeling like there were some scriptural issues, The Broken Circle Breakdown is a high quality film, worthy of viewing. It forms, with the films if references (knowingly or not), a modern school of hyper-realist drama and, if not quite up to the snuff of Blue Valentine or Tree of Life, is at least a slightly lesser talented peer.