Stillness pervades Belgian director Bas Devos’ fourth feature, Here, a contemplative film richly steeped in the duality of the isolation and interconnectedness prevalent within modern urban life. Set in Brussels, the story, insofar as there is one, revolves around a young construction worker named Stefan (Stefan Gota) and his simple interactions with the people in his life, to whom he hand-delivers containers of soup that he’s cooked from the wilting vegetables he cleans out of his fridge in preparation of moving back to his native Romania, perhaps for good.
Along the way, Stefan crosses paths with Shuxiu (Liyo Gong), a bryologist, or scientist who studies moss. Shuxiu also moonlights at her aunt’s Chinese restaurant, where she meets Stefan one day when he decides to get a bite to eat while taking shelter from the rain. Those viewers seeking some form of narrative momentum in the film can cling to the eventual second meeting-by-chance between the two, where Stefan, a blue-collar worker who helps build hulking structures, becomes enthralled with his new friend’s work on the miniature intricacies of these tiny forests – nearly as much as he’s enthralled by Shuxiu herself.
But like much of our quotidian existence, Here doesn’t spell out an explicit narrative. Meaning must be inferred and even pieced together from seemingly dull moments. These quiet, introspective sequences guide the film and provide the space necessary for Devos’ camera to consider the beauty in the mundane, whether that consists of neon light illuminating raindrops as they bead and streak down a storefront window, passenger trains groaning past at twilight, leaves rustling in sun-dappled trees or even just the motionless, complex textures of moss. Resplendent with static shots that capture protracted moments within the city and nature alike – scenes wherein very little happens beyond occasional sparse dialogue or the sights and sounds of people gradually moving from one place to another – Devos’ film illustrates the human desire for connection, while exploring quiet spaces that, depending on our mindset, either surround us with a calming peace or slowly smother us.
Though the film most frequently returns to Stefan after it drifts into long series of urban and rural landscape shots, rife with muted city sounds or insect noises and birdsong, we also glimpse Shuxiu in her daily life. Whether she has her eyes buried in her microscope in an office surrounded by plants or works at the family restaurant or out in the field gathering specimens, we are given small insights into her experience of the world. In one beautiful passage, she provides voiceover narration to a sequence of sunny, soothing nature shots in which she considers the panic and transcendence she experienced one morning when she awoke and temporarily couldn’t form the words to describe the objects in the room around her. Waking to a nameless world, she felt animalistic, interconnected and wholly existing within a present moment devoid of human constructs.
Devos’ debut film, Violet (2014), was a Van Santian study on trauma and grief experienced by a disaffected teenager who witnesses the violent death of a friend. The stakes in Here are far different, a Stefan merely socializes over his gifts of soup as a process of saying goodbye. But his longing to both escape his listless life in Brussels and to bask in the familiarity of people with whom he’s shared experiences simmers throughout the film. Stefan cuts a solitary figure, no more so than when he’s kneeling in front of his fridge in his crummy apartment, stacking vegetables onto the floor in preparation for his soup. Yet he’s also someone who clearly yearns for the company of others, as in a scene where he meets with his sister late one night while she’s on a break from work, telling her he simply wants to hear her voice and growing so contented by the experience that he briefly drifts off to sleep.
Though some viewers may do the same when presented with the film’s soothing imagery and glacial pace, Here makes for a largely introspective experience that’s compelling in its ineffability. Without a score, the film wisely relies primarily on diegetic sound, alternately the hum of the city and of the natural world. There’s also some comfort in simply listening to people talk, in any of the various tongues spoken throughout this primarily French language film. With Brussels lovingly depicted as a cultural melting pot – given Stefan’s Romanian and Shuxiu’s Chinese heritage – the film speaks to the universality of the human condition, with all its humdrum labors and small joys. Throughout a Zen-like 82 minutes, the primary tension lies within Stefan himself, as he quietly weighs his motivations for leaving Brussels against the reasons he has to stay. We don’t know if his burgeoning connection with Shuxiu, whose perspective and fascinations clearly enamor him, will lead anywhere (though there is a humorous implication that it won’t), but that’s not the point. With Here, Devos highlights the transcendence of human connection. In doing so, he offers a meditation on the ephemerality of existence, on the beauty and bittersweetness of temporally occupying a particular space in time, and on the emptiness and fullness of all things.
Photo courtesy of The Cinema Guild
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