Gene Bervoets Movies
- 2009
This jet-black comedy from Dutch director Alex van Warmerdam concerns a nasty woman named Emma Blank (Marlies Heuer). A crabby geriatric who lives in a seaside villa and is gradually withering away from cancer, she treats her servants like dogs. Her constant browbeating pushes them beyond the point of indignation and ultimately threatens to incite a small-scale rebellion. ~ Nathan Southern, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Marlies Heuer, Gene Bervoets, (more)
- 2003
Part of producer Regina Ziegler's Erotic Tales series, The Gallery is written and directed by Dutch filmmaker Jos Stelling. Belgian actor Gene Bervoets stars as a married man who witnesses a tall blonde woman (Anoushka) undressing in a public shopping center. The pompous man takes this as a cue to start his own display of affection. This half-hour short film was originally shot on Super 16 mm and has no dialogue. The Gallery is the final film of Stelling's Erotic Tales trilogy, following The Waiting Room and The Gas Station. ~ Andrea LeVasseur, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Gene Bervoets, Anoushka, (more)
A career criminal struggles to perform an act of street justice as he loses control of his faculties in this thriller from Belgium. Angelo Ledda (Jan Decleir) is a veteran hitman who has spent most of his life as a hired killer. Angelo decides to get out of the business when he finds he's losing his memory due to the early stages of Alzheimer's disease, but he's been offered a lucrative final assignment that involves murdering two people. Angelo initially says yes to the job, until he finds out one of his targets will be a 13-year-old girl; it goes against Angelo's principles to kill a child, and he decides not to take the assignment. However, Angelo quickly discovers his customers found someone with no such scruples; angry, he seeks vengeance against the man who would kill a young girl, and as he shoots his way through the chain of command that led to the murder, he makes the troubling discovery that the crime is tied to a cadre of powerful figures in business and politics. As Angelo struggles against his failing memory to find out who had final responsibility for the hit and why they ordered it, a pair of police detectives, Vincke (Koen de Bouw) and Verstuyft (Jan Decleir), is trying to find the link between the murders of a growing number of prominent citizens. The Memory of a Killer as initially screened in Belgium as De Zaak Alzheimer, or The Alzheimer Case. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Koen de Bouw, Werner De Smedt, (more)
- 2000
As its title suggests, 3 Erotic Tales is just that -- a trio of sexy shorts tossed off by a group of European filmmakers. Produced by Regina Ziegler, the omnibus begins with Bernd Heiber's "The Night Nurse," in which a cop standing guard over a convalescing criminal entertains torrid Florence Nightingale fantasies about the lowlife's ravishing RN. Georgi Shengelaya's "Georgian Grapes" sees a sleepy little village shaken to its foundation by the arrival of a sexy actress, who provides a local mechanic's jealous wife with a few lessons in the art of seduction. Rounding out the titillating triptych is Jos Stelling's "The Gas Station," his follow-up to "The Waiting Room"; the short centers on the affairs of an unfortunate man who flirts with a fellow driver while stuck in a traffic jam and quickly discovers the true meaning of autoerotica. ~ Rebecca Flint Marx, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Franziska Petri
- 1999
A suicidal man spends his last day on earth saying goodbye to his friends in this poignant Dutch comic-drama. Telling his friends he's leaving on an extended bicycle trip, Dirk Van Dijck spends the day catching up with his friends at a café, giving them his regards and posessions to hold onto. What they don't know is that the man, terribly depressed, intends to kill himself. No Trains, No Planes was chosen as the closing night feature at the 1999 Rotterdam Film Festival. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Dirk van Dijck, Ellen Ten Damme, (more)
- 1996
Lisa is Swiss mountain climber whose life is destroyed when her philandering ex-boyfriend Rob drops a boulder of bad news upon her. The two broke up shortly after Lisa returned from a failed attempt to climb the Matterhorn and found Rob in bed with a stranger. To work off her anger and grief she rappels down the side of a tall hotel building. Just before the police catch her, she drops into the room of Sam, a serious young pianist preparing for an up-coming competition. An introverted mama's boy, Sam seems an unlikely candidate for being her next lover, but after Lisa gives Sam a few mountain climbing lessons, that is exactly what he becomes. Unfortunately, Rob has been trying to find her, not to win her back, but to inform Lisa that he has been diagnosed as HIV-positive. Lisa, too tests positive and now she must use her mountain-climbing skills to scale the high walls of the remote mountain monastery where Sam has gone to prepare for the semi-finals of his piano competition. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- 1995
This Dutch adventure drama chronicles the birth and preservation of a Flemish legend. The tale begins in mid-16th century Flanders when Spain ruled the area. A peasant revolt is in progress and a gang of rebels is seen lugging the giant head of a statue onto Nettelneck's farm. Just then the Spanish arrive and only one rebel survives the invasion. The rebel makes love to the farmer's wife and then leaves. She later bears a son. A few years later this boy, who is ostracized by the community, meets Campanelli, an Italian minstrel who claims to have witnessed the massacre and the boy's creation. He then fancifully spins a yarn about the curious lad's father, telling him that his father lives and helms a fabulous ship. He also tells the boy, his father can fly. The boy grows up believing this and eventually takes his lover Lotte to begin searching for his mystical father. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Rene Groothof, Nino Manfredi, (more)
- 1993
In the fourteenth century, few options were open to women, and anyone showing the slightest degree of independence was likely to be denounced as a witch and summarily burned. In this story, young Christine (Natalie Morse) has a strong devotion to the Virgin Mary, and has asked to be walled up in the church as an anchorite for the rest of her life. This suits her ambitious parish priest (Christopher Eccleston) perfectly, and she is forthwith walled up. Her mother (Toyah Wilcox), an herbalist, midwife and wise-woman, is not of the same mind, but she is not only ignored, but soon runs afoul of the local authorities. Meanwhile, Christine is adapting to her new life in strange ways, and finds ways to transcend her imprisonment through making good use of the completely unusual privacy it affords. In one erotic scene, she even manages to find a physical expression for her mystical marriage. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Natalie Morse, Gene Bervoets, (more)
Based on Time Krabbe's The Golden Egg, The Vanishing is a deeply disturbing psychological thriller about a young man's search for his girlfriend after she disappears at a rest stop during a short trip. Over the course of three years, the man obsessively searches for her, using his spare time to put up posters and leave handbills, hoping that someone will give him a clue to the mystery surrounding her disappearance. The kidnapper, having watched the man for some time, is intrigued by his increasing obsession and finally contacts him. He then gives the man the opportunity to learn firsthand of his girlfriend's fate. The film, frightening and moving with a chilling conclusion, is a small masterpiece as director George Sluizer confronts and examines the true nature of evil and obsession. Sluizer remade The Vanishing in an American version four years after the release of the original Dutch film, inexplicably changing the shocking ending which gave the original film such power. ~ Linda Rasmussen, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Bernard-Pierre Donnadieu, Gene Bervoets, (more)
- 1987
If you like the title of this Belgian production, you'll love its source, a story by Charles Bukowski titled The Copulating Mermaid of Venice, Calif. Actually the film draws material from three different Bukowski stories to outline three crucial stages in a man's life. The hero begins as a 12-year old naif, "develops" into a miserable pimply adolescent who yearns for the girls who laugh in his face, and "matures" into an alcoholic, drug-addicted bum with a predilection for necrophilia. Amazingly, the material is handled with subtlety and sensitivity--the trick is to get through the film's first painful moments. The episodic nature of Love is a Dog From Hell is due to the fact that the film began as a 30-minute short subject, then was expanded into a feature when a distributor evinced interest. For its grindhouse playoffs, Love is a Dog From Hell was retitled Crazy Love. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Josse de Pauw, Michaël Pas, (more)
