Fermeture de l'usine Renault à Vilvoorde (La vie sexuelle des Belges, 3e partie) (1999) User Reviews

Tale of an imminent closure

[bigar-2 · 7/10 · 6 May 2000]

This documentary follows the closure of the huge Renault factory in Vilvoorde, Belgium. It is a chronological account seen through the eyes of the filmmaker. By putting the camera where the action is, you can really feel what all the workers feel when they try to battle the imminent closure.

Fermeture de l'usine Renault à Vilvoorde

[rmutt · 9/10 · 20 August 2003]

Fermeture de l'usine Renault à Vilvoorde. Third movie of the sexual life of Belgians, this guerrilla documentary carry on whit the demolition of spectacular cinema. Jan Bucquoy makes a series of aesthetic choices that gives him the possibility of making a movie without the classical cinema system. You will not have a photography director, a cast, a 35mm camera, a film, and a film script! Whit his handle DV-CAM, Bucquoy offers to the editing all the expression responsibility and expands the representation in documentation without forgiving the power of his personal artistic expression. In this way this movie is a corrosive political pamphlet, which pulls spectators in the middle of the new economical order's disaster. The shooting down of a factory, another defeat of the international (global) working class, is the occasion to think about the contemporary work system based on the exploitation of human resources. Is it possible to change it? Don't we deserve something else, such as a life and not simply a job? How say NO to the cynicism of the upper class and his top managers? If Michael Moore whit Roger and me (1989) showed that it was necessary to make these questions, Jan Bucquoy try to give an answer. The sexual life of Belgians is a new life in which strikes and sit-in are not enough. A brand new day starts by a consciousness, ridiculous, satisfactory rebellion. Do you desire to know why in the end of the movie workers make a party whir champagne and caviar? Just see this Belgian movie!

The unexpected closing down of a factory and the reaction of the workers.

[silverauk · 10/10 · 24 February 2002]

When I saw the movie for the first time I was surprised by the fact that the workers and the politicians have no impact at the decisions of the management to close a factory even if 3,000 workers lose their jobs. The movie shows that in any case the captains of industry do not care at all if there is any form of contestation when thousands of people loose their work. The interviews of the workers show their frustration. The director of the movie is himself involved in the action and he even is a collaborator in the fiction part of the kidnapping of the chief-manager Louis Schweitzer. At a moment I took it even for real. This movie is special because it confuses the spectator in that he does not know where is the documentary part and the fiction part. In this way it gives a way out to the anger of the people involved. Of course, Louis Schweitzer is not murdered by one of the workers. But the idea that it can go on in somebody's mind is fearful enough to give a strong thriller component to the movie so that it becomes more than just a social documentary.

Masterwork of editing

[piet-vandenbrande · 10/10 · 6 May 2004]

This movie is a splendid lesson in "montage alterné" like the French say and like Serguei Eisenstein did in his "Le cuirassé Potemkine (1925)" and "Octobre (1927)". Schweitzer, the general director, is a man used like a puppet to shoot at and his remarkable "No" reveals his stubbornness to deploy their construction of the Megane to Moscow. The music is good and well-chosen and the funny action at the end is really entertaining without unnecessary violence. This is the type of movie that the channels should show! The workers and different left-wing politicians are interviewed and they can give their commentary and reveal their feelings. This movie is an intriguing documentary of one of the greatest strikes in recent European history.