There is a there in Here
Bas Devos's movie shows us a different side of the Belgian capital
In some circles it is almost taboo to depict immigrants without subjecting them to oppression, violence, shattered identities and so on. The interviewer in this discussion with Bas Devos is a bit flabbergasted by the world of Here, Devos’s 2023 movie about a Romanian construction worker who cleans out his fridge and makes a big pot of soup.
Certainly the Brussels of this movie would not be recognizable to shoppers on the Avénue Louise or tourists at Atomium. But the interviewer’s accusation that Here is “placeless” seems not quite right. These characters meander through the city’s byways gently examining their surroundings. If the landmarks don’t stand in sharp relief, it’s because we are situated in the Europe that Rachel Kushner describes rather menacingly in her novel Creation Lake:
The real Europe is not a posh café on the rue de Rivoli with gilded frescoes and little pots of famous hot chocolate…the real Europe is a borderless network of supply and transport. It is shrink-wrapped palettes of super-pasteurized milk or powdered Nesquik or semiconductors. The real Europe is highways and power plants. It is windowless distribution warehouses, where unseen men, Polish, Moldovan, Macedonian, back up their empty trucks and load goods that they will move through a giant grid called “Europe,” a Texas-sized parcel of which is called “France.”
The parcel called “Belgium” depicted by Devos is cozier than Kushner makes it sound. It appears like a giant humming electrical appliance with grass growing on it. The Bruxellois look reservedly at Europe’s first train lines and mingle calmly with one another within this electric-industrial vortex. I’m not sure that there is no violence in Here, but there seems to be an absence of personified authority. The ruling forces are mechanical and abstract, and they are outshone by trees, weeds, rocks, and most of all, mosses.
Stefan makes a soup out of his leftovers and supplements it with some light foraging around town. If this is not sounding like a high-octane thrill ride, then you’re right: the events unfold with utmost gentleness. You can tell Stefan is a man apart from the dominant local culture because he wears shorts for most of the movie.
Indeed, the denizens of Here are on the cusp of liberation from the structures that give most bourgeois narratives their shape. Stefan’s job is winding up and he’s heading back to Romania. He bids farewell to his sister who receives the news with a friendly shrug. Romance is in the offing but Stefan pursues it in a supremely relaxed way that culminates in a final scene too good to spoil. So love, work, and family are non-urgent concerns. What’s left is to wander and wonder in an urban environment dominated by hissing flora.
These characters occupy space differently than in most movies. They’re beside boundaries and along outskirts. Stefan hangs out in the concrete foyer of a massive apartment building where less-thoughtful people would not dwell. He enjoys a beer with some colleagues in a grassy enclave near the train tracks. And he hunts for mosses with his new companion, Shuxiu, who checks out specimens in her tiny office, intermittently relaxing her shoulders between glimpses through a microscope.
Played by Liyo Gong, Shuxiu is a beautiful specimen herself, holding forth about the qualities of her samples. Her slightly bossy tone doesn’t come from insecurity, instead she’s including others in her inquisitive journey. Her character appealed to me even more when I learned that Gong is not an actress but a film editor – the painstaking attention she brings to this role transfers neatly from her day job.
For all the arcadian rhythms of the movie, streetlights popping on amidst summer greenery and rainfall, this takes place in the real Brussels. From what I could tell, the parkland that the characters visit is either the Marais de Jette-Ganshoren or the Parc Roi Baudoin. Brussels, home of the “Belgeway,” has a somewhat concocted quality, having entombed its river, the Senne. The city became a capital because it was in between other key places, like Madrid or Indianapolis. In other treatments, the intense cosmopolitanism of Brussels can make it feel generic, but for Devos the city is a setting for his generous and capacious view of contemporary society. I don’t think there could be any Chinese restaurants in America named after Mao’s Long March, but I checked and it is indeed real, right there on the Rue de Laeken, near the Théâtre National Wallonie-Bruxelles.
Another sign of Belgianness is the appealing score by Brecht Ameel. The plucks of Ameel’s violone recall the “koto” album by SSALIVA. The Chaudfontaine-based musician evokes Japan’s national instrument, but his creation is digital, and all the more haunting for being artificial and ethereal. I’m not sure these two musicians are aware of one another but together they have created an impressive playlist for urban Belgian flânerie.
Here does not just depict a world without right-wing political takeovers or COVID lockdowns. It advances a vision where our political and material situation is generous enough to allow creative movement, free of the old social constraints. It’s not that money and family-bonds have lost all importance, but they simply don’t have the oppressive gravity here that they do in other settings. Eighty-four minutes was not enough time in this emerging utopia.
