A mix of film noir, thriller, and slapstick. This is how the Belgian duo Abel Dominique and Fiona Gordon describe their film "The Falling Star".
People who fall without being able to get up again remind me so much of the world today, says Fiona Gordon.
The Belgian director duo Fiona Gordon and Abel Dominique live and work together, and they often complete each other's sentences in interviews. Their films take a long time to make and are always created with a surprisingly low budget.
Aside from Fiona Gordon and Abel Dominique always having the lead roles, they hire friends and amateurs for the other roles.
Amateurs have an innocence that professionals don't have. Amateurs are clumsy in a way that suits us, says Fiona Gordon.
A lot of improvisation
"The Falling Star" is about the former revolutionary Boris, who has been wanted for 35 years and now works at a bar. One day, Dom, who has been searching for Boris for years, comes to kill him. But Dom's ex-wife Fiona also shows up. What follows doesn't resemble traditional film noir.
We're more clowns than filmmakers. We do some theater, we like the sketch-like. But film is a magnificent medium, it gives us more time, says Fiona Gordon.
The duo's films seem to have been created through improvisation, and that's true to some extent.
We improvise, but we do it before filming, says Abel Dominique.
As soon as we have the plot clear, we meet in the studio and rehearse and improvise. Then we come up with exactly how we want it.
Loves Mr Bean
As inspiration for "The Falling Star", they mention films by Orson Welles, Alfred Hitchcock, Norwegian director Bent Hamer, and his Finnish colleague Aki Kaurismäki. They also love "Mr Bean".
Not the feature films, but the TV series. Rowan Atkinson is a fantastic clown.
Fiona Gordon and Abel Dominique believe they are relatively alone in making the kind of films they do, and that they always have to work with low budgets.
Now they're considering making a comedy about used robots as their next film, but Fiona Gordon says with a sigh:
Maybe it's just too ambitious and expensive for us.
"The Falling Star" will have its Swedish cinema premiere on July 26.
