Dogme days

>> Strass has neither form nor function

by MARK SLUTSKY

Vincent Lannoo’s Strass is two kinds of movie simultaneously: a shaky-camera, video-shot Dogme 95 movie and a faux-doc, or “mockumentary.” It’s a weird blending of styles. Dogme dogma sets itself against “artificial” lighting set-ups, but Strass has characters being interviewed in what clearly are set-up conditions. Does that count, if the documentarian characters themselves, rather than the actual filmmakers, lit the set? Do the fake documentarians have to work according to Dogme guidelines?

If these are the kind of questions you’re asking when you’re watching a movie, something’s wrong. Strass isn’t a terrible movie by any means, but it’s definitely dull enough to inspire reflections on whether the mockumentary and Dogme forms are really compatible. Set in a Brussels drama school, the film follows the acting class of the slightly psychotic Pierre (Pierre Lekeux), a teaching maestro who’s responsible for the career of at least one major star. At least he claims he is. Lekeux’s method is the “Open-Door Technique,” a teaching style that seems to mainly involve hitting on his female students and yelling at everyone else. With no success with the women in his class, Lekeux starts to freak out more and more, eventually trying to molest a new student (an incident which becomes a major scandal when the documentarians—never seen—give the tapes of the incident to a TV station).

A lot of mouth-frothing ensues as the class prepares for its final production, a performance of Don Juan. Lekeux fights with the other teachers, enlists the help of his one successful student, Leopold (Gaetan Bevernaege), and generally freaks out a lot.

Strass is clearly trying to be a comedy—we’re supposed to laugh at these crazy drama people and the crazy things they do—but Lannoo twists it around at the end, giving the movie a very “intense” dramatic conclusion (humiliation, degradation, despair etc). It rings really false, and seems transparently like an attempt to make the movie even more Dogme. It feels tired, and the movie’s reflections on the role of the media (in the form of the documentarians) are nothing we haven’t seen before either. Strass has some amusing moments, but they aren’t enough. :

Strass opens Friday, April 26