Always on Sunday: Moscow, Belgium

"Aanrijding in Moscou" is the original title of the movie Moscow, Belgium (2008: Christophe Van Rompaey). Matty (Barbara Sarafian), a mother of three children, including 16-year-old Vera (Anemone Valcke), and mostly without art-teacher husband Werner (Johan Heldenbergh), whose midlife crisis is being tended by a former student, collides with a truck while backing out at the supermarket, and remains peeved and confrontational during the argument that follows, despite 29-year-old truck driver Johnny (Jurgen Delnaet's) evident personal interest in her.

    The New York Times review, "The Pursuit of Happiness Is a Complicated Affair," identifies the film's substantial value:

The movie’s steady attention to detail lends it a texture rarely found in films about domestic life. Its eye and ear for the particular and for what is left unsaid in tense conversation is unerring. Ms. Sarafian’s natural and expressive performance allows Matty to snap into sharp focus like a digital photograph. By the movie’s half-hour point you may feel as though you have lived with her for several weeks.

    Another significant value for me is the film's careful thematic writing. Matty works in a post office in Ledeberg, on the outskirts of Ghent. One of her customers is an older man who frequently comes in to purchase stamps to mail funeral notices. His flirting with Matty subtly establishes a love-death connection that is beautifully exploited, first, by a another customer's remark that "we all end up with one of those letters," then more pointedly near the end of the movie with respect to Matty's quandary over Johnny.
    Vera is in love with Nathalie (Griet van Damme), who is studying to become a nurse and wants to go into "palliative care," or tending to dying people in hospice. "Those people are real," she says, "they know what's happening."
    Matty and the two young women go to a local bar for its weekly program of karaoke-like performances. Johnny is there and takes the microphone to sing "Mona Lisa," which he delivers lavishly to Matty, but Matty walks out, indicating to her companions that Johnny is ridiculous and was embarrassing her.
    Natalie disagrees. "It sounded real to me."

My wife and I thoroughly enjoyed the movie, which we watched by Netflix instant download.