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C'est arrivé près de chez vous [1992] While Henry Portrait of a Serial Killer looked like a fly-on-the-wall documentary about a mass murderer, this sprightly, sick Belgian comedy adopts the approach of This is Spinal Tap and Bob Roberts and presents itself as an actual documentary, with a director [Rémy Belvaux] and his team traipsing around in the footsteps of Benoit [Benoit Poelvoorde], a compulsive but professional criminal who always begins the month by murdering a postman and sorting through the mail to track down lonely pensioners who are more given to hoarding their tiny fortunes than the suburban yuppies he occasionally kills for pleasure but who are a waste of time financially because they keep no cash on hand. As the film progresses, the crew, at first disturbed enough by their subject to avoid eating with him, become more and more implicated in his crimes, eventually joining him in a hard-to-watch Christmas rape massacre and suffering during the crossfire as a feud develops between Benoit and other crooks, including one who also has a film crew following him, the rival documentarists being slaughtered for the sin of using video as opposed to film. Slightly overlong for its wonderful central conceit, this still manages
to walk a knife-edge between extreme bad taste and angry moralism. Poelvoorde
creates a remarkably complex and repulsive portrait of a killer desperate
for attention and respect, who intersperses his helpful lectures on
the correct way to weight a body for disposal with pompous thoughts
on art, architecture, music and family values, somehow contriving in
his jolly way to be even more obnoxious when not slaughtering people.
While Benoit is constantly upholding himself as a professional murderer
as opposed to a psycho, the film exposes his self-deceit in a devastating
birthday party where, after the crew have given him a shoulder holster,
he off- handedly shoots dead his best friend and continues with the
fun while the guests sit stunned and covered in gore. Filmed on the
cheap, with the lack of funds even made a part of the script as Benoit
offers to chip in the proceeds of his robberies to finance the documentary,
this surrenders occasionally to artiness, as in a silly insert of Benoit
running naked on the beach, but mainly manages to pull off the very
difficult trick of making potentially offensive subject matter at once
funny and pointed. First Published In: The Good Times [issue unknown] Visit Kim's Official Website at www.johnnyalucard.com
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