Written
and Directed by Dominique Abel,
Fiona Gordon and Bruno Romy
Rating: (2.3)
ERIC'S STAR RATING
Review:
L'Iceberg
Dominique
Abel, and Fiona Gordon were, for a time, professional circus
clowns, and this greatly informs and restricts their abilities
as filmmakers. This film proves that editing is important part
of the filmmaking process, and that what sometimes works on
stage or TV doesn't work on the big screen. Not that the gags
don't work, they actually do much of the time, but there's lots
of scenes with people just sitting (or standing) there waiting
for the scene to start. Dead air almost never works, especially
in Belgium.
The film begins with an Eskimo woman (Lucy Tulugarjuk)
explaining that she's one of the last speakers of a native
language and then explains that she's going to tell how she met
her husband. We soon forget about her, as it appears she has
absolutely nothing to do with the rest of the movie
Fioana (Gordon) is cleaning up her fast food restaurant, when
she gets locked in the freezer, and is discovered the next
morning by an employee. It looks like a Carol Burnett episode
without the dialogue. What happens next looks like it was
inspired by Spielberg's “Close Encounters of the Third Kind,”
and like the characters in the aforementioned film, she becomes
obsessed with a distant iceberg somewhere in the far north.
Fiona's husband (Dominique Abel) and two kids (Ophélie Rousseau
and Robin Goupil) are worried, but soon she escapes, and winds
up on a town on the coast, where she pursues a mute sailor
(Philippe Martz), whom she wants to hire to take her to her
dream while her husband arrives to take her home.
The big problem with the film is pacing. Even though Gordon and
Abel have been doing comedy for years and years, the film is a
series of tableaus and gags which may indeed work by themselves
but are done in a way where there's a great deal of dead air.
The final third of the film, which takes place at sea, is
especially so, and gets really old really quick. What was
crucial to slapstick comedy in “ancient times” was timing,
something this film doesn't really have. Pity.
Eric Lurio
Richard E. Schiff
Richard E. Schiff
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Richard E. Schiff
Dominique
Abel, and Fiona Gordon were, for a time, professional circus
clowns, and this greatly informs and restricts their abilities
as filmmakers. This film proves that editing is important part
of the filmmaking process, and that what sometimes works on
stage or TV doesn't work on the big screen. Not that the gags
don't work, they actually do much of the time, but there's lots
of scenes with people just sitting (or standing) there waiting
for the scene to start. Dead air almost never works, especially
in Belgium.
