Film Description
| RUMBA | ||
| Director: | Dominique Abel, Fiona Gordon and Bruno Romy |  |
| Country: | France /Belgium | |
| Year: | 2008 | |
| Language: | French with English subtitles | |
| Runtime: | 77 minutes | |
| Rating: | NR | |
| Principal Cast: | Dominique Abel, Fiona Gordon, Philippe Martz, Bruno Romy | |
| Trailer: | View the trailer for this film | |
| SCREENING TIMES | |||
| Sunday, November 9 | 5:00 PM | L'Essor | |
Featuring Fiona Gordon, graduate of the University of Windsor School of Dramatic Arts.
Rumba, a Belgium-French coproduction by the Belgian directorial trio of Dominique Abel, Fiona Gordon and Bruno Romy is old-fashioned silent-film comedy reworked into a modern-day fairy tale. More Langdon and Lloyd than Chaplin and Keaton, the on-camera duo of Dominique (Dom) Abel and Fiona Gordon deftly pepper their Latino dance routines with comic deadpan mime and agile body maneuvers. Some visual gags also recall the finesse of Jacques Tati and Mr. Bean.
Set in a rural Belgian community, Rumba opens with schoolteachers Dom and Fiona rehearsing for weeks to win a Latino dance contest. Fiona, of course, teaches English at the school to youngsters who love to repeat her quirky lines about a dog eating his favorite meal of rice pudding. When the dance contest rolls around, another trophy is won to add to their shelf. Their joy is short-lived, however, because on their way home they crash their car to avoid hitting a would-be suicide.
The upshot? Fiona loses a leg and Dom his memory. Their dancing days are over, although their routines are rendered in full in flashback sequences. The fun shifts into high gear when Fiona returns to her classroom on a crutch to teach smiling young faces who are happy to have her back. But when she tries to balance her briefcase with the swing of the crutch, she ends up tripping all over herself - and finally falling out of an open window. The scene is hilarious!
Meanwhile, confined to the house, the absent-minded Dom tries his hand at a baking chore. It gets him nowhere when he can't remember how many eggs or pinches of salt he last threw into the bowl. When school colleagues decide to chip in for a wooden leg for Fiona, it seems like the perfect solution. But while enjoying a barbecue over an open fire in the backyard, the wooden leg catches fire. Fumbling to help, Dom manages to burn the house down.As for how this all ends, better wait until Rumba comes to your neighborhood bijou.
Ron Holloway
