Bas Devos is a Belgian director who is new to me and his passion seems to be to showcase the city of Brussels and perhaps the people who live in it. That might not be immediately apparent in this quiet, contemplative film and indeed it’s hard to tell for a long time what it is at all. I think I do get what the director was trying for here, in showing the forest that exists as part of Brussels and in emphasizing the immediacy or thisness of small moments. But to fully achieve the intended effect would require truly sublime imagery and cinematography and I don’t think this film quite reaches those heights.

Stefan is a migrant from Romania who works in construction in Brussels. He is fluent in French but does speak in his native language with fellow Romanians. Being due to return home on vacation, he decides to take his car but needs to wait for a few days as it is being repaired. He also suffers from insomnia and needs to clear his fridge before he leaves, so he decides to make soup with what he has left and give it away to everyone. This includes a colleague who works a second job at a hotel and the Romanian mechanics working on his car. Meanwhile Shuxiu is a graduate student from China who is conducting research on mosses. Her aunt runs a Chinese restaurant in Brussels and the two first meet when he stops by for a meal. They meet again when Stefan takes a shortcut through a forest to check on his car and finds Shuxiu intently observing mosses with a magnifying glass. They end up spending the day together as Shuxiu explains what she is doing and Stefan helps her with her work.

This is the kind of quiet, understated film that I would usually enjoy except in this instance, I found it difficult to identify with Stefan. From practically the beginning he talks about going home, so the whole time I was waiting for the journey which never happens. Instead he spends his time seemingly mucking around with no clear purpose, wandering the streets at night, ducking into a communal garden and chatting with people. The visuals are beautiful with frequent cuts to close-up shots of the mosses that so fascinate Shuxiu along with the nature scenes of the woods that seemingly lie within the city itself. I perceive that the intent is to get the audience to notice the small things in city life that we never think about. In this case, this includes the construction workers, often migrants, who we take for granted, and the underappreciated bits of nature. But it doesn’t quite work for me as the images just aren’t that outstanding or sublime in the way that someone like Terrence Malick can put together a scene and you just instantly feel how perfect it is.

The director also wants to make the usual sort of statement about cultural diversity. Both of the main characters being non nationals who both in their own respective ways contribute to Belgian society. I liked the throwaway shot of Stefan accidentally jostling an African woman while riding a bus. She waves away his apology and the whole interaction takes place using perfect French. We later also see that Stefan’s sister works as a nurse in Brussels. It’s a common sentiment from artistic types and is perhaps a deliberate stance to take in light of how the general public has turned against mass immigration. There’s an obvious parallel between the migrants and the mostly invisible mosses that so interest Shuxiu, but I’m not sure it’s enough to carry the film.

That makes this a case of a film that I should like but actually find only middling. It feels to me like the visuals are meant to be eye-opening but are actually only okay in my book. I’d still be keeping an eye out for more work by Bas Devos because I can see the potential here and I like the idea of watching more films about Belgium.