Eldorado

Eldorado is a road movie filmed in the south of Belgium .The director, Bouli Lanners, also acts as one of the main characters in this tragi-comic story which unfolds at a leisurely pace, indeed much like the relaxed pace of the whole of Wallonia.Lanners also acts in the recommended Rust and Bone by Jacques Audiard. Lanners' other directorial exploit The Giants is worth watching, even though the reactions on this one are widely varied.Typical of the French speakers of Belgium, in an interview Lanners confesses his deep love of Flanders and thanks some of his Flemish friends, "without whom the film wouldn't have been possible", but "regrets not to speak their language" meaning that if the Flemish friend doesn't learn to speak French there will be no friendship.

This movie is terrific. It was my favorite of the 2009 Palm Springs Film Festival. The director/lead actor and supporting cast are excellent -- it is hard to believe they are acting and not "being." I recommend this highly -- you will become completely immersed in this snapshot of the characters' lives.

For no apparent reason, an antique car dealer decides to drive a petty thief and (apparently) recovering addict to his parent's home and then to a city. The dealer is rather quiet, but there is pent up sadness in him, like he is trying to help the thief for some personal reason. The thief is talkative, dumb, and damaged, realistically funny yet pathetic. Their dialogue is a classic of dysfunction, convoluted about things that don't matter - like whether to smoke inside even though there are no cigarettes - but that still get to an important place on occasion. They go through a series of comic meetings with very strange people, all of them fantastic yet completely believable, in the best tradition of cinema magic. Even the most banal incidents are perfectly sculpted with truly fine acting.Of course, along the road more and more is revealed of the situation of each life. It is very moving and sad, doesn't really point to recovery or any durable friendship for either of them, and ends on a depressing note that reminds the dealer of the state of his life.Warmly recommended.

Although set in Belgium, the movie has a strong French influence in its total composition. However, the unique aspect of the movie is its minimalist style, on the verge of becoming a melancholy short story. Throughout the show, we get glimpses of our utterly day to day humanity, in bits and pieces. It's hard not to feel emotion and not to identify with the vulnerability of an individual character. In contrast with Hollywood productions, European ones like this have a knack for reminding their audience that life is either a pure tragedy or an odd continuation of an eternal short story. I doubt there is any morality tale, except a surrendered soul's sigh, not too different from "well, this is life." I did feel sad at the end though. If you can tolerate the slow pace, you will be fine. Give it a go.

A young junkie, trying to quit breaks into the home of Yvan (Bouli Lanners). Through a series of circumstances Tvan agrees to give his new acquittance (Fabrice Adde) a lift home, rather than have him use that great European public transportation. They take off in his 1979 Chevrolet wagon toward the border (in Belgium, really how far can anything be from the border). The road trip has several stops along the way to peak your interest.The story tells us that none of us are perfect. There is good and bad in all of us and that when we are a person in need, we can overlook a lot. You need to nurture your relationships with family. Mildly humorous. The road trip sound track is a steel guitar you might expect from some grindhouse. I was bored with most of the film and tiresome dialouge. The car is the metaphor.F-bomb, no sex, full frontal male nudity.

It has been a long time since I have seen a really good foreign movie. Eldorado is Film Movement's production from Belgium and it is a story of two unlikely man making a bond together. They do not know each other, they do not trust each other, but they are both restless, searching for things neither can define and by all means, they are outcasts.Both men are trying ot make sense out of their lives. Can they help each other? Can they save each other? Can each help the other find the way and peace where emotional pain can finally go away - if not only for a moment. As they embark on the road to visit young man's parents, they encounter a number of unfortunate events that are hillarious and bizzare at the same time. Of course, visit to the young man's parents is not a happy one and the end is as heartbreaking as it is explosive.

There are some stories that start in an unfamiliar place, follow a completely unpredictable path, and land somewhere...else. Bouli Lanners' strange and wonderful road movie, ELDORADO, is such a tale.Here's the story. A used car salesman drives a drug-addicted young man home...along two-lane highways in rural Belgium. But home is not as it should be. So he drives the kid back to the big city.But road movies are rarely about destinations. They are about what happens between travelers along the way. And a whole lot happens to these offbeat travelers on their journey.There are the predictable road movie moments: the falling asleep at the wheel near-miss, the broken down in the middle of nowhere scene. But these are handled so imaginatively, so not-cliché: a very naked man steps out of his RV to offer assistance, a local yokel has a fetish for accident scenes.Both characters are haunted by lost relationships--and it is this point of connection that keeps them together, moving forward. Until there is nowhere left to go. And this relationship is lost, too.ELDORADO is funny, heartbreaking, strange, and incredibly entertaining from first to last frame...a must-have addition to any home film library.

Bouli Lanners a-t-il voulu faire "du Wim Wenders"?/On peut se le demander, tant le personnage de Fabrice Adde, "Élie", ressemble à celui d'Harry Dean Stanton dans "Paris, Texas" (1984.), de ...Wim Wenders. Casquette rouge, barbe noire négligée, souvent renfermé dans un mutisme, allure nonchalante, ce sont là beaucoup d'évidences. Et, tout comme W.Wenders, Bouli Lanners semble fasciné par l'Amérique : les paysages belges et français semblent terriblement américains, l'omniprésence des voitures américaines confirme également cette hypothèse.Et puis, bien évidemment, il y a l'aventure sur la route, qui est poétique, mais aussi pessimiste, tels le "vieux" collectionneur de vieilles voitures, majoritairement américaines, et toutes marquées par un accident (Une jeune femme enceinte a ainsi été renversée.), ou encore les retrouvailles avec la mère, très stigmatisée par l'absence d'Élie, les disputes entre Élie et son père.Ce film repose sur une synthèse parfaite entre burlesque, "road-movie" à l'américaine (Bien que ce genre n'en est pas vraiment un mais plutôt une étiquette clichée, pas du tout représentative du film.), drame et poésie.L' histoire : Yvan (Bouli Lanners, excellent.), dealer de voiture surprend chez lui un cambrioleur un peu maladroit (Fabrice Adde.), et toxicomane. Il décide finalement de ramener l'intrus chez lui. Commence alors une longue route, semée d'embuches pas évidentes, où l'on rencontre des personnages truculents, qui ont tous des conditions de vie quelque peu ...disons non-conformistes.Les dialogues, assez rares (Il faut dire que les silences sont suggestifs et ont beaucoup d'importance.), sont parfois désopilants : B.Lanners est un champion du burlesque. La mise en scène, classique, montre un Bouli à l'aise avec la caméra, filmant brillamment des paysages, avec quelques travellings, des plans fixes qui nous laissent le temps d'apprécier l'image. Et le scénario, même classique, nous réserve suffisamment de surprises : comment interpréter la fin?/Est-elle aussi évidente qu'on le pense?Ne vous passez pas de ce joyau, ça se mange sans fin, c'est beau, et en plus c'est pas long. Avis à ceux qui y verront quelques longueurs : ou alors c'est qu'ils n'auront rien compris, ou bien, c'est qu'ils sont trop/très dépendants d'une mise en scène rapide, haletante (et grossière?), hollywoodienne et moderne. Bon film.

Comme tous les films et le personnage de Bouli Lanners, c'est un univers décalé, drôle, débordant de tendresse, un petit bijou de film.

Qualité d'image correcte. Un film agréable, reposant, relatant la vie de chacun des personnages que l'on va rencontrer tout au long de ce voyage. C'est bien joué.

déjanté comme un rêve ou cauchemar qui concentrerait l'essentiel de ce qui doit être dit dans un climat un peu nébuleux et non déterminé d'avance, un délice un peu piquant

C'est pas possible d'avoir loupé ce film....Le regard de la maman de Didier tenant les mains de Bouli.... Alain Delon qui sort du Mobile Home....En plus un réalisateur qui a l'air tellement....vrai...Je l'aime Bouli Lanners !