MIFF 2007 Monday 6 August

EX-DRUMMER (dir Koen Mortier, Belgium/Netherlands/Italy/France, 2007)

Oh. My. GOD! What a complete and utter headfuck this film was!

The debut feature from director Koen Mortier, and based on the book by Herman Brusselman, Ex-Drummer is an undoubtedly accomplished, deeply disturbing, remarkable, bloody mess of a movie.

Dries, a famous writer who lives a life of pleasure, fame and literary acclaim, is asked to play drums in a punk band made up of disabled misfits. The lead singer, Koen, has a speech impediment, and the unpleasant habit of beating women into a bloody pulp when he's not walking around on the ceiling. The bass player, who is incapable of bending his right arm due to a surreal childhood incident, keeps his father tied to the bed, and is gay. Oh, and his bald, obese mother is fucking Koen. Ivan, the guitarist, is a deaf drug addict who lives in complete squalor with his wife and child.

Other characters include a donkey-dicked musician, the gay man he rapes in a public toilet, and the young student who sleeps with Dries and his wife, whose thesis Dries mocks yet adopts as a constant question to all he meets.

Opening with a beautifully surreal scene, in which the three band members ride backwards on bicycles as the film's credits appear as stickers, signs, words in windows and on car doors, Ex-Drummer rapidly takes us into a dark and grisly place. Rape, murder, rampant misogyny, homophobia, poverty and racism abound, all shot with spectacular beauty by cinematographer Glynn Speeckaert. The film's tone veers from savage satire to cold observation to frenetic rock video style and back again.

Surreal moments abound also. I've already mentioned Koen, who strides about on the ceiling of his apartment while others stand on the floor below, but there's also a scene in which Dries and Big-Dick step inside the now-cavernous vagina of Big-Dick's harried wife to illustrate the accuracy of his nickname.

There are moments of sublime albeit fierce beauty in the film, too; such as a sequence at a punk gig late in the film. The music throughout the film is fantastic, whether furious original punk tracks, or the sublime sounds of Scotland's Mogwai. The violence is hardcore, particularly the violence against women; this is not a film for the faint-hearted.

Ex-Drummer is a stunning cinematic debut. That said, it's also a deeply disturbing, deeply confusing film. I read it as an indictment of the middle class and their patronisation of the working class, but I'm sure other viewers would have a totally different view of the film and what it means. Did I like it? Oh yes. Did it confront, shock, sometimes anger and often disturb me? Indubitably.

EX-DRUMMER: Three and a half stars