Caught in A Web of Love

By RICHARD CORLISS

TOTO LE HEROS

Directed and Written by Jaco Van Dormael

Doesn't every child sometimes feel like an orphan? In the dark night of the crib, didn't we imagine we were kidnapped by Gypsies or abandoned to the wolves? A child's bleak isolation and his need to find a haven in fantasy are the mind's first defense mechanisms. In Jaco Van Dormael's rich and rewarding Belgian film, young Thomas Van Hasebroeck (Thomas Godet) has such fears and daydreams. He believes he was switched at birth with Alfred, the boy next door. And he has created an alter ego, a secret agent named Toto, who mows down bad guys like Alfred. These inventions help Thomas anticipate the cruel challenge of adulthood, but they can't help him overcome it. Soap bubbles are not armor.

Doesn't every old man, if he has outlived his family, feel like an orphan? Deprived of that loving touch, he relies on memory, a frail thing that ornaments the past and shackles him to it. So it is with the old Thomas (Michel Bouquet). In the bleak prison of a retirement home, Thomas now has only one animating purpose: to kill Alfred, who stole his life. Reviewing this life, Thomas finds it as mundane as it is painful: "Nothing ever happened in this guy's story." But the rest of Toto le Heros -- which hopscotches over scenes from infancy, childhood and young manhood -- gives the lie to this dour assessment. It also demonstrates, with poignancy and sharp wit, that there are vigorous new ways to tell an old man's story.

As a child, Thomas has a verdant interior life; he creates beguiling explanations for every chapter in his family history. For the meeting of his father, a pilot, and his mother: "Dad's a plane driver. One day he fell into Mom's garden and stayed there." For the begetting of his older sister: "Mom smoked a cigarette, Dad licked Mom's hand, and that's how Alice was born." For his younger brother, who has Down syndrome: "Celestin was born in a washing machine. That's why he's funny."

Outside, the bully Alfred taunts Thomas, goads Celestin and pursues Alice. Better to stay inside with a father who plays magical parlor tricks, a mother bountiful with her caresses, a sister who loves Thomas shamelessly and will defy death to verify her passion. Perhaps Alice (the elfin enchantress Sandrine Blancke) is the reason Thomas has decided he is only a visitor here. If he is not her brother, he can someday be her lover.

So Thomas' home seems an ideal universe, a fortress shielding him from all the Alfreds outside. But for the young adult Thomas (Jo De Backer), life is a constant adjustment to loss -- a perpetual replaying, in ever sadder variations, of childhood's magnificent and terrifying dreams. He meets a woman, Evelyne (Mereille Perrier); because she looks like Alice, he must fall in love with her. Evelyne is the mature fulfillment of Alice's promise, yes, but she is also a photocopy, enlarged and a bit smudged, of his vision of Edenic sensuality. And just as Alice had appeared, in Thomas' jealous eyes, to flirt with the hated Alfred, so will Evelyne, all unawares, lure him back into his rival's orbit.

In his first feature, Van Dormael, 34, shuffles Thomas' memories into a meld of brief, telling scenes. But the allusive structure is not just a director's game. It is the best way to present a man's life, not as it is but as it is remembered, and to cue us to recognize that a father's, a mother's, a sibling's love is a precious, imperiled gift. The movie is as complex as a cryptic crossword, and as direct as Celestin's greeting when Thomas comes to visit his retarded brother: "You're here. I'm happy."

One may need a second viewing to appreciate the subtle artistry of the web Toto weaves around a man to whom "nothing ever happened." So see the movie, then stay and see it again. Some of life's, and the cinema's, most beautiful moments deserve to be relived immediately.