Filip Peeters Movies
- 2009
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
- Starring:
- Cécile De France, Sandrine Blancke, (more)
- 2008
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
- Starring:
- Koen de Bouw, Filip Peeters, (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)
- 2001
A young man's interest in film history leads to a revelation about his own past in this drama. Sam (Benoit Magimel) is a student and film fan who is fascinated by Sylvain Marceau (Sagamore Stevenin), an actor who had a brief career in the 1930s but seems to have vanished while working on "Princess Marushka," a historical epic that was never completed. Sam decides to make a documentary about Marceau's life and disappearance, and attempts to arrange an interview with Lisa Morain (Jeanne Moreau), a veteran actress who worked with Marceau on "Princess Marushka." Despite her initial reluctance, Sam is able to persuade Lisa to discuss her memories of Marceau, which turn out to be deeper and more personal than he imagined: when she was 22, Lisa met the young Sylvain when both were patients at a tuberculosis sanitarium in the French Alps. Lisa and Sylvain became quite close, and she learned that Sylvain was a Jew, which in Europe in the 1930s was hardly the ticket to a long and uneventful life. As Sam learns more about the story of Lisa and Sylvain, he finds himself increasingly curious about his own past, a subject his parents (Denise Chalem and Michel Jonasz) are not inclined to discuss. Lisa also features Marion Cotillard as the youthful Lisa. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Benoît Magimel, Jeanne Moreau, (more)
Just how far should a father go to help his daughter gain fame and fortune? Jean (Josse De Pauw) lives in a working-class Belgian community, where he holds down a job at a bottle factory with his friend Willy (Werner De Smedt). Jean and his wife Chantal (Gert Portael) have a teenage daughter, Marva (Eva van der Gucht), who like her father, is interested in music; Jean likes to write songs in his spare time, while Marva dreams of becoming a singer. But Jean's songs don't seem to impress anyone but Willy, and while Marva has a good voice, she's overweight, has little charisma, and seems a poor prospect for success in show business. When the bottle factory is shut down, both Jean and Willy are thrown into dire circumstances, and Jean is trying to figure out how to support his family when his car breaks down in the middle of nowhere. He is offered a ride by a friendly stranger, whom Jean soon recognizes as Debbie (Thekla Reuten), a well-known pop singer. In a flash of ill-advised inspiration, Jean gives Debbie a heavily drugged beverage, and after she passes out, he spirits her away to a cottage in the woods. He then contacts Debbie's manager (Victor Low), informing him that he has the star hidden away -- and if he ever wants to see her again, Marva has to be given a chance to sing on national television. Iedereen Beroemd! was shown in competition at the 2000 Venice Film Festival. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Josse de Pauw, Werner De Smedt, (more)
- 1998
Former radio reporter/photographer/TV director Julien Vrebos made his feature directorial debut with this Belgian-Dutch-German thriller inspired by the unsolved murder of 34 people by the Nivelles Gang during the '80s. The convoluted plot begins when the assassination of diplomat and double-agent Toussaint is investigated by policewoman Eva Siccard (Alexandra Vandernoot). She gets an assist from Flemish cop Peter Daerden (Peter van den Begin). Peter's girlfriend Kristl (Pascale Bal) dances at a club frequented by the wealthy Baron d'Aulne (Raymond Gerome), who sends terrorist Sophie (Natacha Amal) out on attacks in shopping malls. As it becomes clear that Toussaint was killed by Sophie, Peter's life is in danger. Shown at the 1998 Cannes Film Festival. ~ Bhob Stewart, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Peter Van Den Begin, Pascale Bal, (more)
A strong-willed Dutch woman recalls her life in this uplifting picture that won the 1996 Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. Antonia (Willeke van Ammelrooy) is an elderly woman who wakes up one morning and realizes that this is the last day of her life. She begins to tell her story in flashback, beginning with her arrival home to the family farm after World War II with her daughter, Danielle (Els Dottermans). For the next fifty years, a variety of colorful characters come and go on the farm. Danielle becomes a painter, and decides she wants a child but no husband, so Antonia arranges the proper donation. Danielle giving birth to Therese (Veerle van Overloop), who laters has her own child, Sarah (Thyrza Ravesteijn), also without virtue of a husband. Antonia and her descendants come to symbolize the freedom of independent females, with little need for men in their lives. ~ Don Kaye, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Willeke van Ammelrooy, Jan Decleir, (more)
