Amnesia provides romantic opportunities Nobody has to know, the first English-language film by Belgian director Polly Lanners. All is well in his bittersweet love drama, but the dry absurdity of his earlier films is missing.

It’s commendable when filmmakers look for new avenues because they don’t want to repeat themselves. So kudos to Polly Lanners who is after his hit movies above (2005), Eldorado (2008), Les Gents (2011) and Les Prime Minister Les Daenerys (2016) He wanted to take a new step.

do it with Nobody has to knowco-directed by Tim Melantis (from the film Nudist Camping Wit Patrick2019). Not a movie set in Wallonia or France, but on the Scottish Isle of Lewis. Lanners plays the Belgian Phil Einzelganger, who has moved to the island and works for a sheep farmer. A man feels at home in the closed religious community and vast, rugged landscape, but his life changes when he suffers amnesia after suffering a mild stroke. He no longer recognizes people, not even Mielle, who is in her fifties and the daughter of an old sheep farmer. It hurts to remind him that they were lovers. The movie beautifully shows how the love between the two slowly blossoms again. Afterwards it turns out that their past was different from what Millie had suggested.

Nobody has to know It is a subtle and quiet love drama in which everything is fine. Touching at times like a man with a past, the bearded Lanners seek peace in an environment where time seems to stand still. With Michelle Fairlie, best known as Lady Stark in Game of thronesUnder the gorgeous appearance – Millie is called the “Ice Queen” on the island – we feel a strong desire for affection and love. The two actors are carried away by the film, in which the landscapes shot by the experienced photographer Frank van den Eeden look like a third person.

However, there is something gnawing at the realization that this is a movie directed by Lanners. Through his previous four films, the Belgian director has shown himself to be a completely original talent with an absurd sense of humor. These films are captivating tragicomedies about the struggles of people on the margins of society. The kind look at the human helplessness showed great sympathy. This sympathy is there Nobody has to know It remained, but the wry humor that made Laniers such an exceptional talent disappeared. Love drama Nobody has to know, which Lanners says he hopes to reach a larger audience than his previous work, lacks cross-sectional specificity. The drama about two outsiders in a conservative religious community could have been made by any talented art house filmmaker. Again: There’s nothing wrong with a delicious love drama, but we’d expect something a little more original from the Lanners. absurdity force.