Waste Land

As Leo drops off his son at school, he whispers in his ear, “Be careful… don’t hurt anyone.” At age six, his son already knows how to use a gun. This is the result of Leo’s occupation as a homicide detective working in Brussels’ seamy underworld, and Leo’s wife doesn’t approve of his proximity to danger. When she discovers she’s pregnant, it spurs her to condemn the underlying subtext of violence in her family. As Leo is assigned to a heinous crime involving a Congolese immigrant, he begins to drift into a deeply psychological entanglement that has ramifications beyond his job. Intense and hallucinatory, Pieter Van Hees’ final entry into his “anatomy of love and pain” trilogy is a portrait of a life immersed in the suffering of others and the resulting inseparability of work and family. Culminating in a nightmarish, hair-raising finale, WASTE LAND lingers long after the lights come up. (In French and Dutch with subtitles) – C.P.