Les convoyeurs attendent

A first film, in black and white, set in a very gray Belgian suburb that starts out being explosively funny, then turns. Roger (Benoit Poelvoorde) is a photographer who cashes in on his subjects: the victims of accidents, farmers in a field riddled by hailstones, losers caught in the banality of small-time tragedy. He has the eye of a director, someone who provokes happenings. Indeed, his ambition is to quit the small time for the big time by making the Book of Records — he doesn't care much what kind of record is involved — and winning a car. He terrorizes his wife, daughter and son to follow a scheme that is quite crazed: The idea is to open and close a door 40,000 times in 24 hours. Once the door — a marvelous surrealist entity, a Magritte that appears to float in space — is built and framed, he has only to persuade his son to train for the event. Mechanically, the boy complies, opening this door that leads out on the void, then, turning around and stepping back into, again, nothing. The stage is set, and instead of more hilarity, the night of the contest becomes a nightmare marathon. The director has done wonders with material that could have been repetitive, like that door. The family drama and the stifling environment converge to make a film that turns dark and darker. Poelvoorde is riveting in the role of a man of ordinary madness driven to absurd acts because his life doesn't have the color and vibrancy of his wildest dreams.