An official selection of the Telluride and Locarno Film Festivals, The Falling Star is the latest caper from Dominique Abel & Fiona Gordon (Lost in Paris, The Fairy) filters the language of film noir through their characteristically colorful palette to create a series of deceptively minimalistic set pieces that recall the best of Jacques Tati and Buster Keaton. Abel plays Boris, a former activist hiding from his dark past, keeping in the shadows as a barkeeper until a one-armed vigilante finally hunts him down. The fortuitous appearance of a double – the depressive recluse Dom (also played by Abel) – seems to offer the perfect decoy. But his tenacious and loopy ex-wife, the private eye Fiona (Gordon), could foil their master plan.
We open The Falling Star this Friday, September 20 at the Royal.
“Next time someone wistfully insists, ‘They don’t make ’em like they used to,’ why not point that nostalgic cinephile to the work of Dominique Abel and Fiona Gordon? The Belgium-based creative couple are almost single-handedly keeping the classic burlesque tradition alive on-screen.” – Peter Debruge, Variety
“Unique and poetic…a symphony of primary colours, scenes composed as if paintings, bodies which speak louder than words, dances which suddenly possess the various characters, and irresistible visual ingeniousness (only they could find such sublimity in toilet paper).” – Aurore Engelen, Cineuropa
Directors’ note: “The Falling Star, our fifth film, takes place in a world of social turmoil: today. Every time we open the door we can hear the chant: a world with no conscience is destroying the world. We’ve placed our disgraced political hero in this contemporary context. Boris continues to bury his head in the sand whilst all around him, ardent activists protest for a fairer, cleaner world. In parallel, we follow a more intimate struggle with Dom and Fiona, two social misfits who continue to exist in a world that continues to exist without them.”
On their style: “Our films are often described as “poetico-burlesque.” By crossing the road from physical comedy to film noir we aren’t abandoning our desire to create laughter. We’re exploring a more bitter palette. Pessimism, nihilism and melancholia irrigate The Falling Star, but our ensemble of morally inept characters fill our film noir with vibrant, jubilant color.”
Fiona Gordon was born in Australia in 1957, Dominique Abel in a small Belgian town called Lobbes the same year. After their studies (theatre for Fiona, economics for Dominique) they studied theater and movement with Jacques Lecoq, Philippe Gaulier & Monika Pagneux in Paris, where they met.
In the eighties, they created several physical theater shows that toured worldwide and founded their company, COURAGE MON AMOUR.They took their first film directing steps in the nineties with three shorts, then began making features, often with their accomplice, Bruno ROMY.