I am most familiar with Brussels by night – a vignette from real life that was the glorious Eurotrip of 2010. Belgium was my Waterloo (1815), hell but like a dreamland in retrospect. I’ll never go back. No point.
This was most interesting as a documentation of a time and place as well as for its drama and peculiar narrative style
The protagonist has quite the rugged and haggard face, unusual for a film, aye. He isn’t likeable but you still keep engaged.
The seemingly random progression of scenes and their emphasis on the mundane – everyday tasks which accompany our hissy fits – do a proper job of drawing you in to this wholly unpredictable and almost peak Godardian semi-banger.
It reminded me of Last Tango in Paris (1972) a bit, but without the psychobabble and the creepiness.
