Because life here isn't tough enough for those who can nichts Deutsch verstehen, I decided to test out my imperfect ability to speak two languages by watching a French movie with German untertiteln. HAHAHAHAHAHA. However, as this movie demonstrated, some jokes are universal, even with imperfect comprehension.
Set in a border town between France and Belgium (I can't remember the name), the movie is set just as France and Belgium decide to open their borders and therefore close the manned customs office (Bureau de Douane/das Zollamt) located there. The news produces great grief in Ruben Vandevoorde (Benoit Poelvooerde), a proud Wallonian (French-speaking Belgian). A noted Francophobe (whom he refers to as *camemberts*), he becomes overzealous in his pursuit of potential French smugglers - they're just going to his country to ruin it! His French counterpart Mathias Ducatel (writer-director Dany Boon) largely regards Ruben as an annoyance except for the fact that he's dating Ruben's sister (unknown to Ruben) until one day he waves through REAL drug smugglers who are only to be caught by the Belgians 5m down the road. To overcome the two men's enmity and explore ways that Customs Officers can be used to catch smugglers in the age without border controls, the two are forced to spend time together in a crappy car patrolling the border. Cue the odd couple and cultural jokes!
To be honest, there was nothing ground-breaking in this movie. The jokes mostly derive from making fun of accents, national stereotypes, the arbitrary way in how people can be prejudiced against others despite sharing a common language and (largely) geographic location, and the slapstick attempts to smuggle and to catch the smugglers. But that's not to say it wasn't pleasant. Despite the difficulty in switching between two languages, one that I'm learning and one that I no longer know perfectly...I totally understood the jokes! My main criticism would probably be that despite being mostly a light-hearted comedy, there are moments of violence that seems so out of place in the context of all the other things happening in the movie. And of course, there is random nudity and sex - this wouldn't be a French movie without it.
Anyway, Nothing to Declare/Rien à Déclarer/Nichts zu Verzollen was a very easy way to ease myself into both languages and I suppose something to recommend to people who might want to watch a French film with English subs.
6.5/10
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