Everybody's Famous!

REVIEW
Forget stage mothers, its stage fathers you have to worry about. Middle-aged, blue-collar Jean is obsessively dedicated to his teenaged daughter Marva’s non-existent career. Refusing to be deterred by reason or sanity, Jean pushes Marva to unceasingly disastrous performances at every talent show he can find. When he loses the security of his job, he breaks his tenuous hold on any recognizable reality and kidnaps his small country’s biggest pop star. While Everybody’s Famous doesn’t quite measure up to any expectation generated by its Oscar nomination for Best Foreign-Language Film, it does exhibit a perverse humor and frenetic energy that holds your attention, sometimes against your will. It’s also consistently amazing to see evidence of the universal culture of media saturation, in which one’s life is meaningless unless it gets air time. The film is sprinkled with moments of ludicrous depravity: Jean negotiating ransom demands wearing a Michael Jackson mask; any performance by Marva. Director Deruddere has fashioned a contemplation of contemporary culture at once both bemused and frenzied, often amusing, with enough insight into and compassion for her characters to make them accessible to the viewer. (French, Dutch and Flemish with English subtitles)