Hey, everyone. ”Moriarty” here. This one sounds interesting, and as always, I love when we get reviews of more than the big four or five titles from a fest. This is the sort of fare you go to a festival for... things you might not see otherwise.
Hi AICN, Princess Buttercup here. I'm having a slow TIFF year but did get to a screening of Ex-Drummer yesterday. Ex-Drummer is a Flemish punk rock film; it's directed by Koen Mortier based on a novel by Herman Brusselmans. This is Koen Mortier's first feature film and I believe that Herman Brusselmans only writes in Flemish. The Q&A brought up the fact that Herman Brusselmans is very well-known in Belgium - he writes a couple of novels a year and has a reputation for being controversial, but his work hasn't been translated. This is a shame because if Ex-Drummer is anything to go by, he seems like fun reading. The main character is Dries. He lives a comfortable life with his girlfriend in a nice apartment and is a famous writer. One day, three men come to his door and ask him to be the drummer in their punk rock band. Dries agrees and goes slumming with the band to get material for another book. One catch - everyone in the band has a handicap. Lead singer Koen has a lisp, bassist Jan has a paralyzed arm and guitarist Ivan is deaf; Dries's handicap is that he can't play the drums. This is a blatant lie since the trio only approaches Dries after hearing he was a good drummer, but his fame bolsters their image. Dubbing themselves "The Feminists," the band practices Devo's "Mongoloid" at Jan's house where we are introduced to his bald mother (his father is tied up in the upstairs bedroom) and Jan's various roadie boyfriends. Along the way, we meet Ivan's druggie wife and baby daughter plus catch glimpses of Koen's (literally) upside-down world. Other characters include the Minister of Health's horny daughter and Big Dick (the name is totally appropriate), the lead singer of a rival band. Dries acts as puppetmaster, completing the group's downward spiral into chaos and violence. Overall, Ex-Drummer is quite a good first feature. Everyone's using everyone else, everything and everyone is completely messed up in some way - at the end of the film, I felt like I'd seen a really good band movie where everyone is a bad person and no one is redeemable. And it's funny. The film has a great soundtrack and I believe that the DVD of this film has already been released in Belgium. Worth a look.
