MR NOBODY (Fr/Ger/Belg/Can 2009) ***
Directed by Jaco Van Dormael

It has been more than 10 years since director Jaco Van Dormael graced audiences with a movie.  His last was LE HUITEIME JOUR (THE EIGHTH DAY) in 1996.

MR NOBODY, a lengthy 140 minute opus to director Dormael’s cinematography is a feast to the eyes (this director studied and started off as a cinematographer) but a trying difficult in narrative logic.  The story which jumps all over chronologically concerns a Mr. Nobody (played largely by Jared Leto). 
Nemo, as he is more often called, is married at one point to Elise (Sarah Polley) and at another to Jeanne (Linh-dan Pham).  At other points in the film, Nemo is drowned, shot, and hit by a gas truck.  What is going on? 

But even stranger, as if the film is not strange enough, the film is set in the future of 2092 in a world where everyone achieves immortality.  Nemo Nobody is actually the last living mortal on earth.  He is interviewed at the age of 117 with make-up looking like Dustin Hoffman in LITTLE BIG MAN.  Though the aged Nemo says to the reporter at the end of the movie that the explanation is all so simple, Dormael has taken his audience for quite the wild ride.  And the film is filled with Dormael’s charm as is abundant in his other 2 famous films TOTO LE HEROS and LE HUITEIME JOUR.