“This chip van is all our lives.”

The Belgium comedy film The Wall begins by exploring the country’s linguistic differences through a brief history and some historical footage. There’s the Dutch speaking North, and the French speaking South–known as Wallonia. Writer/Director Alain Berliner capitalizes on Belgium’s history, and takes a good-natured dig at the country’s ethnicity controversy. In the film, after centuries of division and squabbles, the government hatches a secret plot. At midnight, on the eve of the millennium, a wall is erected which firmly divides north and south Belgium. This is a problem for our hero, Albert (Daniel Hanssens) the lonely, plump owner of a chip shop that happens to sit on the newly formed border between the two countries. Albert’s chip shop is literally divided in two, and Albert who attends a New Year’s Eve party in the south can’t get back to his chip shop (half of which is in the north).

Taking a sly poke at Belgium culture, The Wall is a unique film. At the beginning, the surreal plot is fresh, amusing, and energetic. The solemn ghost of Albert’s father pesters Albert constantly with advice, and Albert so longs for love that he writes his own fortunes in the fortune cookies he gives out with each portion of chips. It looks as though his love life may be improving when he meets medical secretary Wendy (Pascale Bal), but he knows he can’t compete with her DJ boyfriend who’s “connected to the internet.”

Unfortunately, after about the halfway point, The Wall simply doesn’t go anywhere. The threads of magical realism are unhappily blended with scenes of sinister militarism. With Albert’s dad shouting, “this is the land of surrealism”, the plot takes huge liberties into meaningless absurdity. The Wall seems to be an ‘idea’ film that flirts with too many genres (musical, magical realism, thriller, romance), and the end result is a plot ends that’s too messy to satisfy. The Wall is in Dutch and French with English subtitles.