Weekly visions - week 7, 2026

Brussels by Night, directed by Marc Didden, co-written with Dominique Deruddere, Belgium, 1983 - ⭐⭐⭐

A deeply troubled man leaves his home in the Flemish region of Belgium to spend some time on his own in Brussels. There, he meets an old friend, and finds new ones in a young bartender and aspiring actress, and her Moroccan suitor.
More than anything else, this film was an opportunity to see the city of Brussels as it was forty years ago, some places having changed, and some staying the same.
Narratively, it was at times an uncomfortable watch, as you keep watching people ignore very clear red flags. And, this being a Belgian film from the eighties, is almost guaranteed to go a little bit too far.

Reste un peu / Stay With Us, directed by Gad Elmaleh, co-written with Benjamin Charbit, France, 2022 - ⭐⭐⭐½

Renowned French comedian Elmaleh returns to his parents’ place in Paris after a few years touring the US, trying to hide from them that he has decided to convert to Catholicism, due to his devotion to the Virgin Mary.
It’s clear that I find stories dealing with faith and doubt very interesting (see also Midnight Mass and Wake Up Dead Man), plus I have a soft spot for films where people play themselves, especially when they involve their relatives in the game. I don’t know how much truth there is in this story, but it looks sincere enough for me to appreciate it.
The few first scenes, and the religious theme, are very reminiscent of Nanni Moretti’s La messa è finita, and Elmaleh has recognised the influence of the Italian director on his work.

Caro diario / Dear Diary, written and directed by Nanni Moretti, Italy, 1993 - ⭐⭐⭐

Speaking of whom, when I chose my next film, I thought it would be my only ‘Moretti of the week’.
This is still part of the ‘forward’ direction in my revisiting of his filmography, and it marks quite a departure from previous films: the semi-autobiographical aspects of the previous works gives way to three stories allegedly adapted from the director’s personal journal.
‘Michele Apicella’, the protagonist from all his previous films, is now simply ‘Nanni Moretti’: a (slightly) more realistic version of the same character. We follow him as he enjoys his favourite pastime (wandering around Rome in summer on his Vespa), undertakes a trip with a friend to to Aeolian Islands (just north of Sicily), and deals with a serious and difficult-to-diagnose health issue.
The first segment is the most enjoyable one, weaving his description of Rome neighbourhoods with considerations about cinema (this was the first time I heard of a film called Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer) and his love for dancing (and flash-dancing). The sequence where he ’tortures’ a film critic by reading him back his pretentiously literary-sounding reviews is hilarious.
The second one is (I assume) the most fictional part, still funny but a bit too long (to give space to most main islands in the archipelago), and a trivial subplot commenting on TV series.
The final episode, depicting his countless consultations with doctors, unavoidably has a very serious (and a little scary) tone.
All in all, still a satisfying watch, but with such a difference in tone between the episodes that can feel quite discordant.

No Other Choice / 어쩔수가없다, directed by Park Chan-wook, co-written with Lee Kyoung-mi, Don McKellar and Lee Ja-hye, based on the novel The Ax by Donald E. Westlake, South Korea, 2025 - ⭐⭐⭐⭐

I have seen Lee Byung-Hun on-screen before (for instance in I Saw the Devil… which I hated ten years ago; I wonder whether my new taste in horror has changed that), but it took Squid Game for me to recognise him. As the lead actor in director Park’s new film, he went past my oversimplification as ‘a Korean Mads Mikkelsen’ to additionally show great comic skills (not that Mr. Mikkelsen isn’t funny in a lot of Danish films).
No Other Choice is another film exploring the problems in Korean society, although the fact that it is an adaptation from an American novel shows the universality of the struggle of losing a job when you’re in your fifties and your family depends on you; but the fact it’s a 30-years-old story perhaps explains why, instead of the ‘eat the rich’ attitude so prominent in modern films, it adopts a more traditional, and ultimately more realistic, ‘war between the poor’ approach, where decent people lose all compassion and empathy towards their fellows, in order to survive.
This is a more coherent, less provocative or surprising entry in Park Chan-wook’s filmography, so for me it doesn’t rate as high as some of his older films, but it’s still a very solid movie, supported by an incredible work of cinematography and editing.

Sogni d’Oro / Sweet Dreams, written and directed by Nanni Moretti, Italy, 1981 - ⭐⭐⭐

Going Moretti-backwards, this is the film I didn’t even know existed: for his other works, I had at least heard the title. This title is perhaps a bit too generic to be memorable.
I said in the introduction above that his films have a relaxing effect on me, but this one absolutely didn’t.
‘Michele Apicella’ is at his most obnoxious here: while he tries to come up with ideas for his third film, he struggles with the insecurity of no longer being relevant, and worries that he will be set aside in favour of less-skilled directors trying to imitate him. So he berates (and even beats up) people around him (including his mother), as he fears that his serious film about Sigmund Freud’s relationship with his mamma will be obscured by a musical about the student’s protests of the sessantotto directed by one of his copycats.
All the while, he dreams of a different film, about a high school teacher having a crush for a young woman.
In real life, this was Moretti’s third feature film, and the overlap between the author and his alter-ego has probably never been this high. Apicella’s arrogance and temper are depicted in such a negative way that they feel like a confession, without any easy self-absolution (compared for instance with Michel Gondry’s Le livre des solutions).
I struggled with this film and its scattered, nervous nature. Still, the fact that Apicella’s dream film is essentially a proto-version of Bianca, gives (perhaps only in hindsight) hope in this author finding a different way of channelling his creativity (and different facial hair).
I feel like I wouldn’t have wanted to be anywhere near Moretti/Apicella in this period, but I can’t help feeling affection for him.

Aprile, written and directed by Nanni Moretti, Italy, 1998 - ⭐⭐⭐½

Sogni d’Oro left me with a bitter taste in my mouth, so I jumped to the next Moretti movie, the one following Caro diario.
Aprile is a film in the same vein as its predecessor but also, by chance, it shows links with Sogni d’Oro, as it goes back to depicting the filmmaker’s struggle to return to making ‘a real film’. Funnily enough, he tries to shoot a musical: the one about the Trotskyist confectioner he first mentioned in Caro diario.
This fictional part of the story merges with real events, both political and autobiographical: the 1994 elections that brought the right-leaning coalition led by Silvio Berlusconi to power, the 1996 ones that swung the balance back to the leftist alliance uniting under Romano Prodi (you wouldn’t believe the strong feelings I felt just by rewatching both events thirty years later), and, most importantly, the birth of his son Pietro.
Most (if not all)of the people we see play themselves, starting with Moretti’s then-partner Silvia (already seen in Caro diario) and his mother Agata Apicella (oh wait…). Moretti’s father, who had cameoed in all of his films up to Palombella Rossa (although, he never played the father figure), passed away in 1991.
Far from being superficial navel-gazing, Aprile once again mirrors the feelings of a whole section of Italian society; actually, for the first time, the majority of Italians was on the same side as Moretti. Without ignoring the many problems still existing, optimism was allowed.