The Broken Circle Breakdown (2013, Felix Van Groeningen)

Didier (Johan Heldenbergh) falls deeply in love with Elise (Verle Baetens), a tattoo artist; she bears her cross like her tattoos tell the tale of her life in a very symbolic way. He is an atheist and devoted bluegrass musician.

Didier and Elise’s relationship is not like any other because it is tinged by this fragile and powerful humanity; also they are very different but not in the usual way, we cleary can define them in two completely different world.

After the first scene where the band is playing “Will the circle be unbroken”, we learn they have a little girl who has cancer. We make a step backward 7 years earlier and discover their first night and moments together.

We see them growing their relationship during a “musical interlude”. Elise has also joined Didier’s band in which she sings. They also get married, very simply with only their band around them.

A couple of months pass and Elise announce her pregnancy to Didier who is angry and surprised. Maybelle is born and their circle is complete.

The movie goes on showing their new lives, being the three of them and showing how the bound of a family evolve and grow stronger and stronger everyday.

The parents fight together in hard moments and also to support their child.

Maybelle dies despite all the treatments.

Didier and Elise are both at the bottom of themselves. Even after all that time where they tried to fight for Maybelle, they are not as close as before and as Felix Van Groeningen says in the interview on cineuropa.com:” The differences between them are more and more obvious” (A. Engelen, 2013).

Elise has changed her name to Alabama, when the band is about to go on stage Didier asks her: “Tell me Alabama…If you are…Alabama. Then who am I?” she answers “Monroe (?)”, it makes a reference to the day they first met and Didier said that one of Elvis’ best song was written by Bill Monroe.

The same night Didier starts screaming that “stupid” religious people slow medical research. Elise breaks up with him that night and commits suicide.

Didier calls an ambulance but once at the hospital she dies. The movie ends on her body at the hospital surrounded by the band and Didier, who whispers her to say hello to Maybelle when she sees her before the band starts to play a song.

The Broken Circle Breakdown is a drama about life and how the people live in it with their weaknesses and their scars. Everyone is condemned to live with his past but we need to move on and bring to a close this circle that is life. The beginning of the end or the end of the beginning, this is the never ending whirlwind of life. The circle is broken because the circle was an allegory for their love and the bound they had, Maybelle was the last missing piece but also the founding piece. Everything is not falling apart because of Maybelle’s death only, also because “Life” happens and people change, and they change their expectations too.

Felix Van Groeningen achieved his aim by taking us on a trip through real emotions sometimes so vivid that we might actually start singing along with the band.