Matty and Johnny first meet after she backs her car into his truck
in a supermarket parking lot. He calls her a “crazy bitch”; she guesses
his ginormous truck compensates for his small penis. So begins the
unlikely relationship between the 41-year-old Matty (Barbara Sarafian)
and the 29-year-old Johnny (Jurgen Delnaet) in Moscow,
Belgium.
Matty is a typically harried mom, with little time to herself. She
can’t even soak in the bathtub in peace. Making matters worse, her
art-teacher husband left her for one of his young students for a trial
separation. She greets everyone with a look of exasperation and tells a
coworker, “My husband is having a midlife crisis, my oldest daughter is
an adolescent, my youngest daughter thinks she’s an adolescent and my
son wishes he was.”
At first, Matty wants nothing to do with recovering alcoholic
Johnny, who shows up at her door, offering to fix her damaged trunk.
She eventually gives in and invites him to stay for dinner. They’re an
odd couple from the start — tentative and combative. She wants
nothing to do with men and thinks he’s pursuing her for sex; he’s
smitten but clearly stung by his previous marriage (he caught his wife
in bed with another man).
This Belgian romantic comedy is way smarter than most U.S.-made
rom-coms. Moscow, Belgium takes time to build Matty and Johnny’s
relationship. They spar throughout the film, even though they have sex
in his truck beneath an underpass after their first date. The movie
also isn’t afraid to give its male lead a violent past.
There’s a funny and tense scene in which the working-class Johnny,
Matty, her smug husband, their kids and her daughter’s date (who’s
meeting the family for the first time) sit down for a not-so-quiet
dinner. It’s a telling moment, with Matty appropriately stuck between
two men and an uncertain future.
This article appears in Jun 10-16, 2009.