In Anke Blondé’s latest feature, two friends — middle-aged men in expensive suits — walk in step through offices and banquet halls for much of the first act. You might expect their strides to be scored by a power ballad or an upbeat hip-hop track, but “Dust” is a film of financial fraud brought to light, so it’s scored by morose and heavy strings, and the two men in question are set to be arrested in mere hours. There’s an absurdity and abstraction to the whole affair that affords us a peek into the minds and egos of those who run the modern world, not to mention some tongue-in-cheek disdain nestled within surprising sympathy. However, these flourishes don’t last, and the movie ends up petering out without all that much to say.
It begins with some dusty substance floating up through the frame, out of focus. It could be snow, or ash, or maybe even flakes of gold. It’s a fitting introduction to a film of innumerable possibilities, one that quickly switches gears to a blank computer screen, and narration about filling in one’s own story. The year is 1999. Handsome Belgian executive Geert (Arieh Worthalter) regales an enthusiastic crowd with a yarn, while his mousy tech head Luc (Jan Hammenecker) demonstrates to what might be the world’s first speech-to-text technology. It may seem rudimentary now, but it was a major breakthrough at the time, not unlike the way today’s tech companies are pushing numerous forms of A.I.
Without wasting time, the film begins dropping hints that something is amiss, as it cuts back and forth between Geert and Luc being summoned by angry board members over the weekend, and them being accosted by cocky journalist Aaron (Anthony Welsh) in a public bathroom, as they dance around the subject of his inquiry. Before they know it, their fate is sealed: Come 9 a.m. Monday morning, they’ll take the fall setting up empty shell companies, and be arrested for defrauding thousands of public investors. But where an exposé might climax with this revelation, here it’s the catalyst for the characters’ strange and introspective final 24 hours of freedom, rendered at first with intriguing flourishes.
Written by Angelo Tijssens, the story is loosely based on Belgian tech firm Lernout & Hauspie, but it has little in common with real events, and often plays like a fable half-remembered. Its gloomy, gas-lit palette and breathy musical hums imbue it with a ghostly quality, as though the Harvard hallways of “The Social Network,” David Fincher’s similarly amber tale of tech caution, were transformed into a haunted house. This eerie sensation is further enhanced by elliptical editing that seamlessly skips back and forth in time across the span of just a few days, creating a sense of fluidity across what should feel discontinuous. It’s enrapturing, and quite hilarious too, as the po-faced, bespectacled Luc — his thinning hair pointed upward like devil horns — pukes and pratfalls, and even does both at the same time.
The two men are separated for much of the runtime, but circle each other as they’re forced to consider absconding or blowing the whistle. However, the hours prior to their arraignment — marked by wall clocks in the background of most scenes — are also filled with moments of remorse, as they catch up with acquaintances and loved ones who will no doubt be affected by what’s to come. Luc consults his wife about how to proceed, while Geert hopes to spend his final few hours of freedom with his driver/boytoy Kenneth (Thibaud Dooms); he is, after all, a man of secrets, while Luc is likely more inclined to spill the beans.
This simmering tension over what they’ll choose to do, as they wander the rural landscape, is the film’s narrative core, and feels momentous during its many cross-cut scenes. However, as the story goes on, the editing becomes more functional and mechanical than poetic, as Blondé presents her scenes in an increasingly protracted, straightforward fashion that, unfortunately, gives the game away. Despite its many scenes of men panicking or silently reflecting on regret, there’s very little substance to “Dust” once you strip away its style; its characters, although vessels for a tale of broken camaraderie, seldom feel tethered to their immediate circumstances.
The film is incredibly, even magnificently, stylish, but beyond its initial presentation, there just isn’t very much guiding the story in any novel or exciting ways — beyond, perhaps, thematic echoes of how the less prim-and-proper tech bros of today might be pulling a fast one too. Both lead performers command the camera’s attention — the long, dimly-lit scenes of the second half would immediately die in the hands of lesser actors — but there are only so many dimensions each man can conjure when the story seldom appears headed toward anything meaningful. It culminates with neither catharsis nor irony, but instead treads a noncommittal middle ground of gonzo sentimentality that, fittingly, might make you look back on the film and wish things had turned out differently.
English (US) ·