Toto the hero (drama) (1991)
(91 mins)
This remarkable
film from Belgian director and screenwriter Jaco Van Dormael has a complex
structure of flashbacks but is so well realised that the story remains coherent
and absorbing.
The film
begins in dramatic fashion with Thomas, now an old man, fantasising about
killing his old friend Albert. It then cuts to a flashback of a fire at the
hospital when they were both babies. Thomas is convinced that during the fire
he and Albert were swapped, and that his life has been cursed as a result.
The story
flits between Thomas’ childhood (particularly his close relationship with his
sister Elise), his adult relationship with a woman who looks like Elise, and
his current existence in a nursing home where his greatest excitement is having
a secret smoke behind the backs of the nurses.
The way that
these three strands run in parallel and also interweave is a great technical
feat but it is not just the story that compels but also the way it is told. The
film is visually inventive and also rich in sound and movement, and it also
manages to weave in Thomas’ highly-developed fantasy life, including his dreams
of being a secret agent (in childhood he names himself Toto the hero). It seems
that this rich fantasy life is a kind of compensation Thomas has offered
himself for the disappointments of real life.
As he looks
back on the tragedies and disappointments of his life, Thomas comes to blame
Albert for how his life has turned out. He escapes from the nursing home and
sets out on a mission to kill Albert. However, things don’t quite go to plan.
This is a
film of many strands. One of them is that the viewer has to account for Thomas’
unreliable narration of events. Did events really happen this way or have they
been distorted by an unreliable childhood memories?
The film was Van Dormael’s debut feature film and was very
well received, winning the Camera d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival. The music
for the film, written by his brother Pierre, received much praise and the
director had his brother compose the music to his subsequent films. Van
Dormael’s follow-up film, The Eighth Day (1996), was also well received but his
third feature, Mr Nobody (2009), which again featured a complex series of
flashbacks, was less successful.
Rating: 9/10
