THE BRAND NEW TESTAMENT A date with destiny
released OUT NOW! 2015 | 15 | dVd Director Jaco Van dormael Cast Pili Groyne, Benoît Poelvoorde, Catherine deneuve, François damiens
God is a prick. At least he is in this blissfully blasphemous Belgian fantasy, which sees his daughter (less well known than his son) rebel against her old man. For one thing, she’s fed up with some of the rules he’s invented: toast with jam on will always land jam-side down, the queue you’re in will always go slower than the one you’re not in, and so on. So she does a fiendish thing to mess the world up: send everyone with a mobile the date that they’re going to die.
So we get a fella who, knowing he’s not due to expire for 60 years, starts flinging himself out of buildings in the knowledge that somehow he’ll have a soft landing. Another goes to the park to gun people down – if he succeeds he’s not to blame, as they were due to die that day anyway.
It’s a delicious, dark concept, and the film’s full of dry wit and surreal surprises. Much of the dialogue is mordantly funny, including the hassled God’s. Unhurried in pace, it tells intertwined stories of human beings’ struggles to manage in this crazy world, which is best summed up by a tramp character: “Life is like a skating rink. Lots of people fall down.”
Extras None. Russell Lewin
The director has a cameo, as a man who gets killed by a bus the second after he gets his text message.