The Falling Star

An official selection of the Telluride and Locarno Film Festivals, the latest caper from Abel & 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.

"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