Jan Decleir Movies

Music aficionados in the U.S. might remember Jeannine Deckers by her stage name, The Singing Nun -- performer of the one-hit-wonder "Dominique," which topped the U.S. pop charts for ten weeks in 1963, displaced the Kingsmen's seminal "Louie, Louie," and inspired the Debbie Reynolds musical The Singing Nun as a fictionalized version of Deckers' life. Behind the gloss, however, Deckers led one of the most unusual lives of any late 20th century European celebrity. With Soeur Sourire, director Stijn Coninx tells the performer's strange story. The tale opens in 1959, when young Belgian girl Jeannine (Cecile de France) flees her parents' strictly conservative home, and moves into a Dominican convent. While there, she chafes beneath the restrictions thrust onto her -- such as the inability to sing and play her guitar -- but begins quietly authoring songs. She impulsively books time in the Phillips studio to record one of the tunes, planning to donate to charity the monies earned from the song, but Phillips executives overhear it and grow so enthusiastic that they offer Deckers a recording contract under the stage name "Soeur Sourire" (or "Sister Smile,") and turn her into an international sensation. Then, at the pinnacle of her success, not long after The Ed Sullivan Show travels to Belgium to film her, she struggles with an attempted reconciliation between her religious faith and beckoning pop stardom. Deckers ultimately shocks everyone by shucking Catholicism, pursuing a full-time career as a recording star, recording radically left-wing protest songs, and taking up with a lesbian partner, Annie (Sandrine Blancke). The two fall deeply in love and open a school together for autistic children, but Jeannine's world falls apart when the Belgian government comes calling and informs her that she owes a fortune in back taxes for "Dominique" profits that she originally donated to charity. This actually marked the second of two major features within a ten-year period to cover Deckers' life -- the first, 2001's Suor Sorriso, utilized an experimental, non-linear approach and received mostly scathing reviews. ~ Nathan Southern, All Movie Guide

Five men share a secret that has deadly consequences in this thriller from Belgium. When Filip (Matthias Schoenaerts), a playboy with a wild streak, finally settles down and gets married, his good friend Vincent (Filip Peeters) presents him and three of his friends with a special gift. Vincent is an architect, and after supervising the renovation of a apartment block, he installed a luxurious penthouse flat for the use of himself and his married pals, where they can enjoy liaisons with other women without their spouses becoming any the wiser. Filip, Vincent and three of their buddies -- hard-drinking ladies' man Marnix (Koen de Graeve), Filip's psychoanalyst brother Chris (Koen De Bauw) and taciturn Luc (Bruno Vanden Broecke) -- are the only ones with keys to the flat, and the only ones who are supposed to know it exists. But one day one of the five checks into the apartment and discovers a woman's bloody corpse shackled to the bed; one of their group is a murderer, but who is the killer and how can the others keep this a secret from the police and their families? Loft was directed by Erik Van Looy and written by Bart de Pauw, both of whom got their start in the film business as actors. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

A young girl charged with watching Santa's horses must track down an escaped steed in this sequel to the 2006 family drama Winky's Horse. Santa has departed from Spain, and he won't be back until St. Nicolas' Day the following year. In Santa's absence, Winky Wong has been asked to look after his horse Amerigo. Enchanted and eager to do her best, Winky soon commences taking riding lessons on Naf-Naf the pony. Her skills steadily growing, the young girl is taught how to tend to the horses by her wise Aunty Cor and Uncle Siem. But while Winky is determined to ride Amerigo, Aunty Cor and Uncle Siem reject the idea by stating that Amerigo is too much horse for her to handle. Upon learning that her mother is pregnant, the conflicted Winky looks forward to having a sibling but fears that she will no longer be the center of attention. One day, while tending to Amerigo alone, Wiky seizes the moment and attempts to ride Santa's horse. Unfortunately things don't go as planned, and Amerigo breaks free from his paddock. Though Winky sets off on her bike to track down the missing horse, Amerigo is nowhere to be found. What's a girl to do after she's lost Santa's favorite horse? ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide

A handful of people living in a Belgian suburb react in a variety of ways to news of a tragic accident in this multilayered drama. One evening, Francis (Johan Leysen) returns home from a long day at the office with a large dent on the front of his car and a clearly unsettled frame of mind, both of which are noted by his wife Ann (Johanna ter Steege). A few hours later, the body of a young boy is fund by the side of a nearby road by Christine (Ina Geerts), Francis and Ann's next door neighbor. The police are called, but by the time officer Mark (Peter Van den Begin) shows up, the child's body has gone missing, sending Christine into a panic, a situation made worse by a phone call from her ex-husband Fred (Robby Cleiren), who is deeply depressed and contemplating suicide. As the night wears on, Mark learns that one of his sons is missing, and may be the boy who Christine found earlier, but while his wife Gerda (Natali Broods) works as a cleaning woman for Christine, she finds it impossible to tell Gerda what she's seen, or about Francis's possible involvement. Meanwhile, Johnny the Flow (Jan Decleir), a washed-up fighter who lives in the neighborhood, had heard about the dead child and is certain he knows who is responsible -- Njord (Franck Chartier), a drifter with a history of mental illness. Een Ander Zijn Geluk (aka Someone Else's Happiness) was the first feature film from director Fein Troch. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

Inspired by an actual series of disturbing events that shocked the city of Amsterdam, Nothing to Lose director Pieter Kiujers' paranoid psychological thriller follows the disturbing journey of an ageing bus driver who becomes convinced that he's uncovered a major conspiracy. Upon losing both his job as a bus driver and his wife of thirty years, a fifty-nine year old bus driver bursts into Rembrandt Tower and takes a security guard hostage. His sole demand is to speak with the managing director of Philips, a company that once rented space in the towering office building. He's convinced that secret codes are being transmitted via widescreen television, and that an unsuspecting public is being secretly brainwashed. Later, key events from the assailant's past reveal that he may not be as delusional as he first appeared. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide

German filmmaker Margarethe von Trotta directs the war drama Rosenstrasse, based on the plight of "mixed marriages" between Jewish men and non-Jewish women during the Holocaust. In contemporary New York, Jewish matriarch Ruth (Jutta Lampe) practices Orthodox mourning traditions for her late husband, to the dismay of her daughter Hannah (Maria Schrader). At the wake, Ruth's cousin Rachel (Carola Regnier) tells Hannah some family secrets that send curious Hannah over to Berlin. She searches out 90-year-old Lena Fischer (Doris Schade), who cared for Ruth during WWII. Flashbacks recall the events of 1943,when Jewish husbands were rounded up and kept in a house on a street called Rosenstrasse. Lena (played by Katja Riemann as a young woman) joins a group of other wives for a week-long protest, where she meets an abandoned seven-year-old named Ruth (played by Svea Lohde as a girl). Rosenstrasse was shown in competition at the 2003 Venice International Film Festival. ~ Andrea LeVasseur, All Movie Guide

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

Based on a popular Dutch children's book by Chris van Abkoude, this comedy-drama concerns Crumb (Ruud Feltkamp), a much put-upon youngster whose poverty -stricken mother is forced to turn him over to the stern Mrs. Koster (Sacha Bulthuis) when she's unable to support him herself. However, Mrs. Koster proves to be a cruel taskmaster who insists Crumb bring her money before she'll feed him. Crumb's money-making schemes sometime cause him to run afoul of the police, and he has earned the enmity of most of the grownups around him when Mrs. Koster unexpectedly dies. To Crumb's surprise, he's taken in by Chris (Hugo Haenen), the owner of a grocery store who develops a soft spot for the scruffy tyke. Crumb is happy living with Chris, but his joy is short-lived when Chris's market is destroyed in a fire; the boy once again is without a guardian, and is sent to an orphanage presided over by the mean-spirited Mr. Keyzer (Jan Declier). Kruimeltje received its North American premiere at the 2001 Palm Springs Film Festival. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

A young woman finally decides she's had enough of people taking advantage of her and does something about it in the violent Belgian drama S.. S. (Natali Broods) is the product of a blighted childhood -- her father was a murderer who often molested her, while her mother was a prostitute who wasn't around much. Grown to adulthood, S. is a confused and angry bisexual who one day discovers her boyfriend cheating on her -- so she kills him. S. is later spurned by another one of her lovers (this one female), and soon she has gone on a crime spree, shooting people who in her mind symbolize her problems, including the manager of a sleazy peep show and a priest with physical designs on her. S. features music by the Belgian rock band dEUS; it was shown as part of the 1999 San Francisco Lesbian and Gay Film Festival. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

A sequel to Belgian cartoonist-turned-director Jan Bucquoy's successful sex comedy The Sexual Life of the Belgians, this erotic romp with elements of political and social satire is set at the title resort, a run-down low-key vacation spot for the working class. Set during the summer of 1986, the tale begins as the Ministry of Culture, anxious to give the campers a healthy dose of culture at the hands of a group of self-importance leftist intellectual artists. The vacationers are less than interested by the pompous productions offered by the cultural experts, finding their own lives, which are shown episodically throughout, more interesting. Some of the characters include the camp manager's overly-uddered wife, a hooker, an a would-be pedophile with a thing for a blow-up rubber woman. Bucquoy is also at the camp with his 13-year-old daughter. In a sentimental turn, he attempts to help her come to grips with a traumatic event from her past. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

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