This is an absurdist dark comedy from Belgium. Shot perfectly in crisp black and white, Benoît Poelvoorde (Man Bites Dog) is on fine form as Roger, the angry, obsessive father of a family in a small, sullen Belgian mining town. Roger is a photographer who, along with his young daughter Luise, visits road accidents to take photos. He is also obsessed with winning a car by entering a competition where the contestant has to break a record - and he decides that his son, Michel, must attempt to break the record of perpetually walking through a door - he even hires an overweight coach to train him. Michel dresses as Elvis and has a spot on a radio show called 'Cinema Lies', where he describes mistakes in films. Luise is friendly with near neighbour Felix, a pigeon fancier. Roger is a callous figure as he pushes Michel right over the limit during the record attempt, which almost results in his death. Interspersed throughout the film are Magritte-like surreal images. It's undeniably charming and well worth your time.

The director of this film has obviously seen a Shane Meadows film or two. Not only was the film set in a small town and centred around the poorer parts but it was also in black and white and featured an odd lonely man who befriends someone much younger than him.It has been described as a comedy but it isn't funny in the way that Hollywood tells you when to laugh and builds up to a big punchline (that is usually very disappointing anyway). This film is of a realist nature and so anything that is funny is funny because it could happen to you or i. The plot is simple and the performances are brilliant. Everything is subdued and wonderfully not over the top which gives it a certain charm that is lost in anything that places special effects over a storyline.The young girl who played Luise could have a bright future ahead of her. Why is that the children i have seen in European cinema are much better at acting than those in Hollywood films? I blame the parents.

It's wonderful to see that Shane Meadows is already exerting international influence - LES CONVOYEURS ATTENDANT shares many themes with A ROOM FOR ROMEO BRASS: the vague class identity above working but well below middle, the unhinged father, the abandoned urban milieu, the sense of adult failure, the barely concealed fascism underpinning modern urban life. But if Meadows is an expert formalist, Mariage trades in images, and his coolly composed, exquisitely Surreal, monochrome frames, serve to distance the grimy and rather bleak subject matter, which, Meadows-like, veers from high farce to tragedy within seconds. There are longueurs and cliches, but Poelvoorde is compellingly mad, an ordinary man with ordinary ambitions, whose attempts to realise them are hatstand dangerous; while individual set-pieces - the popcorn/pidgeon explosions; the best marriage sequence since THE DEAD AND THE DEADLY - manage to snatch epiphany from despair.

This movie takes place in the Belgian region of Charleroi, which used to be a wealthy area thanks to the mines and the metallurgy. Right now is the poorest area in Belgium with serious problems of unemployment. To reflect this reality there are two ways in cinema: by doing a crude social movie close to the Ken Loach point of view, or by getting some distance and from there expose a narration that superficially could be funny but undoubtly the bitter taste will remain in the audience. In this way, this movie reflects some characters obsessed in trying to evade themselves from that oppressive environment: a father who wants to beat any of the records included in the Guiness book, a daughter in love with doves, etc. To sum up, in my opinion the spectator will find here a movie to laugh while seeing it and a movie to reflect on after seeing it.