Interview: Belgian Oscar Submission 'The Ardennes,' Testosterone, and Building Characters

By Jose Solis.

Belgium’s Oscar submission The Ardennes feels like Drive by way of Fargo and Bullhead, i.e. it’s a gritty neo-noir that thrills and disturbs in equal measures. The quasi-Biblical (or Greek) plot follows two brothers who are like night and day, Dave (Jeroen Perceval who wrote the play the film is based on) is a kind soul who works in a carwash and is trying to set up a home with his girlfriend Sylvie (Veerle Baetens), the problem is she was his brother Kenneth’s (Kevin Janssens) girl before he went away to prison. His release brings the family happiness and pain, as they try to help him adapt to the new situation. First time director Robin Pront crafts a smart thriller with colorful characters and testosterone to spare. I sat down with the director and leading man Janssens to discuss the film’s themes, the Oscar race and Belgian cinema.

Read the interview after the jump.

JOSE: Many Belgian films I’ve seen recently have to do with toxic masculinity, and these men who are on the verge of exploding from all the testosterone. Why do you think these are the stories coming out of your country?

ROBIN PRONT: For me it’s always hard to parallels between other filmmakers because outside of Belgium people are trying to put us all in a box. I think those movies do well, so they are shown outside of Belgium. For me personally, I have a lot of testosterone so that’s how I handle it.

JOSE: Would you say there is a concept such as “Belgian cinema”?

KEVIN JANSSENS: We make a lot of different genres, we have romantic comedies, regular comedies that don’t make it far internationally. Americans just know the Dardennes’ social films and noir crime dramas like this and Bullhead.

ROBIN PRONT: The films worth seeing now are very bleak, they have an impending feeling of doom. I’d love to see comedies or musicals even, but those are harder to do, it’s harder to do something romantic than something miserable. For me it’s easier to make something dark and bleak than something that would make me vulnerable like a romantic comedy.

I was really impressed by all the twists. I thought I knew where the film would go and didn’t. When you’re writing how do you find the focus to follow one path?

ROBIN PRONT: I knew the ending I wanted, so I needed to find a believable way to take the characters to that specific scene.

Kevin, I’m assuming you have nothing in common with your character, how do you enter the mind of someone so different?

KEVIN JANSSENS: First you find the similarities, I’m not a psychopath or anything, but you need to love your character. He makes bad decisions but I understood him, I think he’s a good person who had a bad education, his intentions were good but he always fell back on how his genes worked. I also was deeply impressed by the way the screenplay was written, he was very unpredictable so I had a lot of range.

Given how fucked up the world is right now, the movie made me question things like whether people are born evil or not.

KEVIN JANSSENS: I think it’s about education, he’s also very charismatic. He got a clever girl like Sylvie to fall in love with him.

Robin Pront and Kevin Janssens. Credit: Jose Solis

Did you know the backstories for all the characters?

ROBIN PRONT: Those change, sometimes you’d rather change the backstory than the scene.

KEVIN JANSSENS: You never see the backstory in films, it’s also not always important, maybe Robin’s backstory about my character is different to mine. I read the screenplay and had my backstory, I didn’t need Robin’s.

Do you feel the same in every process or was this one different?

KEVIN JANSSENS: This was different. The content was everything and we had a lot of freedom to try things and improvise because we had such a strong base.

The screenplay was based on a play, and the mom made me think of some Medea figure. How was the process of opening up the play?

ROBIN PRONT: I’ve never seen the play, Jeroen Perceval who wrote the play, told me the story and then I did the rest.

KEVIN JANSSENS: The mom is a great example of how you get a lot of information from one sentence, or a reaction.

You’ve done a lot of television, is the process of doing a film different?

KEVIN JANSSENS: Yes, but to be honest the things I’ve done on television like Missing Persons Unit those aren’t characters, they’re not tridimensional, they don’t give information. I loved doing the series, but the characters had no content.

Robin you’ve talked about movies that are “neighbors” to yours and have influenced you unconsciously, I thought Winter’s Bone would be one of those…

ROBIN PRONT: I love Winter’s Bone!

...can you talk a bit about how these unconscious references come up and discovering them?

ROBIN PRONT: I watch a lot of movies and the ones I like linger in my head. Even now I watch the film and I’m like “oh shit”, I don’t want to call it stealing, but movies contaminate you. I think that’s what art is about, you take things from art you love, things that influence you and then you put on your own work. You get influenced by everything around you.

How has the experience of having the film submitted for the Oscar been?

KEVIN JANSSENS: I remember when we found out we were going to Toronto and how surprising and great that was!

ROBIN PRONT: Everything that’s been happening to the movie now is great, but the process of making it was horrible! I thought about quitting so many times (laughs), now you see the good side, but at times I thought “why the fuck did I do this?”, I almost came out like a spiritual person out of the whole thing.

The Ardennes will open in the US in January 2017.

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Comments

[Craver]

Damn fine men lol

[Jaragon]

More on Mr Janssens please...

[Owl]

Saw this movie on an international flight. What a wonderful story and that ending was unexpected as it was affecting. The Kenny character played by Kevin Janssens is the yin to the yang of Jeroen Perceval's Dave. The women in the films may be supporting but have a multi-dimensionality: Sylvie as a hard-bitten but also tender girlfriend, and the mother who shows all the layers of love towards her two sons. Then there's Stef who is neither villain or hero, but lies somewhere in between. Then there's a drag queen character who shows violence and desire all in the same scene. I don't think I have seen anything as nuanced as these characterisations who are so authentically human but evinced in an economy of words and gestures.

The violence was used to best effect rather than an exercise in gratuitousness. Drive is a good comparison here but some violence shown in D'Ardennen is more discursive rather than the obvious one shown onscreen.