Le Trappiste on Avenue de la Toison d’Or is my venue for lunch this Friday.
I’m glad I’ve got in to this quietly elegant art nouveau brasserie early, right on midday. It means I’m able to get a window table near to the beautiful art nouveau entrance door whilst the restaurant is still quiet.
Within minutes, two groups of twenty people have shown up, plus assorted other diners.
So the place is suddenly buzzing.
The waiters in their smart black waistcoats are moving around sedately but efficiently.
It’s great to be ensconced here, tucking into a plate of stoemp.
The sausage is curled under the mashed potato like a smiling mouth under an enormous bulbous nose.
A couple of bottles of very decent Ciney Blonde beer accompany the food.
On one wall of the restaurant there stands a spectacular statue on a raised base, with beautiful curving footlights illuminating it.
In the rest of the restaurant there is wood panelling and mirrors along the walls, and a handsome arched upper level.
A businessman scurries in clutching a Neuhaus bag, probably from the store across the street.
Neuhaus make the best chocolates I have ever tasted, and seeing that bag of them makes me want to go and get some myself.
Glancing out the window, I notice that the art nouveau font used on the awnings over the pavement tables is absolutely wonderful.
In the restaurant name ‘LE TRAPPISTE’, spelled in upper case, the letters ‘R’ and ‘A’ next to each other are incredibly beautiful, like two dancers’ legs.
Well fed, I leave the brasserie and head down the hill towards the Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts de Belgique.
My intention today is not to visit the galleries but simply to buy a poster or two from the Magritte museum shop.
But it is a confusing layout inside and I find myself in two other museum shops, neither of which is the Magritte shop.
I don’t mind, though, because in the connecting area between the two shops I come across a fabulous curving staircase with a glass skylight at the top.
An upturned mirror has been helpfully positioned here so that you can look down at the mirror and get a good view of the staircase above without having to crane your neck to look directly upwards.
As well as the stunning staircase, I also find a great book which I wish I had come across earlier: BRUXELLES – Art nouveau Art déco by Anne-Lise Quesnel.
The photos in this book, taken by Quesnel and by Brice Franckx, are so good that I instantly want to rush round this city taking in all its art nouveau and art deco splendours.
I may not have found the Magritte museum shop, but there is a nice witty variation on Magritte’s ‘This is not a pipe’ at one of the shop cash desks, where a piece of paper stuck to the till announces ‘This is not a cash desk’.
Before the showing of today’s film, the Czech psychoanalytic comedy ‘Surviving Life’, there is plenty time for a couple more beers.
So I first quaff a somewhat disappointing Ramée Blonde. It’s not unpleasant, though it has no finish and evaporates instantly from the palate, leaving me with a slightly unsatisfied feeling.
But the second beer is much better, Affligem Tripel, an austere but imposing brew with a soft luxurious mouthfeel and a smooth texture. The flavour is almost herby. A top-notch Belgian abbey beer.
Tonight’s film is showing at Nova cinema on Rue d’Arenberg.
Nova is an independent cinema with a brilliantly radical programming policy. The stuff they show here would seldom get an airing elsewhere.
Tonight’s offering of ‘Surviving Life’ is one such example, a highly entertaining surrealist comedy directed by Jan Svankmajer.
The film is due to start at 7.30 p.m.
I hand over five euros for my ticket and go in.
At 7.20 p.m. this Friday evening, I am the only person here.
I don’t know if you could use the word ‘auditorium’ to describe the space in which Nova shows its films. It feels more like a big abandoned warehouse or factory building, an industrial chic space in which exposed brick on the walls shows through in many places where the two-inch thick plasterwork has come off.
But it doesn’t feel dingy.
The overall effect is pleasing, a suitably radical environment in which to watch Nova’s bold programming.
The screen is a good size and the seats are comfortable.
Five minutes before show time a couple come in, sit down, and start talking to each other in whispers.
No background music is playing, so we are sitting here in silence in this cavernous space.
Then a nice friendly woman, presumably the manager on duty tonight, comes in and very apologetically informs us that there will be a slight delay to the showing because the projectionist has not yet arrived.
“Il est dans le métro”, she explains.
At 7.40 p.m. there is an influx of around a dozen more people, some of whom are clutching beers from the basement bar.
I have already had four beers today so I don’t feel any desperate urge to have one during the film, though it’s good to know for future reference that it’s ok to bring your drinks in.
‘Surviving Life’ starts with a very droll personal introduction by director Jan Svankmajer.
He lugubriously reports that because they could not raise enough funding to make the film, they had to rely on techniques such as collage and ‘stop motion’ cut paper animation, together with some scenes shot with real actors.
I like Svankmajer’s melancholy self-deprecation in this introductory scene.
He warns the audience that even though the film is meant to be a comedy, there won’t be much to laugh about.
He also does not hide the fact that this introduction constitutes a couple of minutes of padding in order to make the film long enough for cinema exhibition.
The story revolves around Eugène, a bored middle-aged office worker who is visited in his dreams by a beautiful young woman.
She brings colour and excitement into his otherwise humdrum existence.
Because Eugène wants to be able to enjoy these dreams continuously, he visits a psychoanalyst, who misunderstands Eugène’s motivations.
The psychoanalyst seeks to explain the childhood origin of Eugène’s dreams in order to stop him from having the dreams, whereas Eugène has no wish to stop the dreams from happening.
Nor is Eugène in the slightest interested as to why he is having the dreams.
This leads to some funny irreverent digs at Freud and Jung, whose portraits look down upon Eugène during his sessions with the psychoanalyst.
The two main actors in ‘Surviving Life’ are both very good.
Václav Helsus gives a perfect, downbeat but humorous performance as Eugène, whilst Klára Issová exudes innocent good-hearted beauty as Eugènie, the young woman who appears in his dreams.
The supporting cast all contribute well to the surreal universe in which the story unfolds.
The Python-esque animation in ‘Surviving Life’ is funny, tender, and occasionally shocking.
The giant hands emerging from apartment windows on both sides of the street to applaud the encounters between Eugène and Eugènie down on the street below give a warm radiant glow to this bizarrely memorable Czech surrealist film.
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