This pliant comedy is my second Belgian film in a month.
Like Meisjes it is a bittersweet comedy. Two friends, Simon and Julien decide
to buy a mobile home and go travelling in order to escape their small town
lives. But the mobile home breaks down before they can get away. Trapped,
having invested all their savings in the vehicle, they are forced to work in
order to raise funds to fix it. But the longer they stay the harder it becomes to
leave.
The film is leavened by the acting of the two leads, Arthur
Dupont and Guillaume Gouix. The journey they go on in the film is not the
intended one. Unable to flee their flaws, they discover things about themselves
they hadn’t expected or wanted to. It’s a neat narrative device and the film
works well on its own terms. It manages to change gears and unearth some real
pathos as Julien realises the importance of his relationship with his father. There’s
nothing groundbreaking about Mobile Home, but there’s an assurance to the
direction and it does what it says on the tin.
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