Film review: The Broken Circle Breakdown is a must for fans of melodrama

THE BROKEN CIRCLE BREAKDOWN
Starring: Johan Heldenbergh, Veerle Baetens, Nell Cattrysse
Director: Felix van Groeningen
Category: III (Flemish and English)

A six-year-old girl fights a losing battle with cancer while her parents' marriage disintegrates in The Broken Circle Breakdown, Belgium's submission for the 2014 foreign language film Oscar. As heart-wrenching as Derek Cianfrance's Blue Valentine, but with the added benefits of facial hair and cowboy hats aplenty, it is an enchanting, if also blatantly manipulative, chronicle of a relationship's extreme highs and lows.

Loosely adapted from a stage play by Johan Heldenbergh and Mieke Dobbels, this Flemish-speaking, English-singing melodrama turns the premise of a sad romance accompanied by bluegrass tunes into an affecting experience.

With its elliptical structure and wall-to-wall country music soundtrack, The Broken Circle Breakdown — titled after the Christian hymn Will the Circle Be Unbroken, also memorably rendered here — is a little like a feature-length music video interspersed with a catchy story.

It is love at first sight when Didier (Heldenbergh), the bearded banjo player of a bluegrass band, follows his impulse and walks into Elise's (Veerle Baetens) tattoo parlour. An adorable daughter, Maybelle (Nell Cattrysse), soon comes into their life on Didier's picturesque farm, but her subsequent illness — which is related in the film's opening scenes — will ultimately take its toll on the lovers.

None of this feels remotely novel, but Felix van Groeningen has worked miracles in milking every last drop of emotion by juxtaposing the charismatic couple's best and worst moments together. His film repeatedly flashes back and forth between the blissful early days, when Didier and Elise bask in the ecstatic joy of falling in love, and the tortuous present, when their relationship is first touched by grief and then further torn apart by religious differences.