Ne Me Quitte Pas is a tragicomic ode to failure. Set in the Belgian countryside, Bob (Flemish) and Marcel (Walloon) share their solitude, sense of humor and craving for alcohol. It is a story about mortality in a place where time seems to stand still.
I watched as long as I could, as this tedious ordeal revealed itself on the screen, but I could not make it to the end without walking out. Watching these men live one joyless, wasted moment after another, was sheer torture. Pointless, plot less, and ultimately meaningless would be the best description I could offer of this film, and if you suffer through the scenes in the dentist chair with the hope that the film goes somewhere with this material, you will be disappointed. But the topper was watching the children being subjected to a kind of psychological torture--merely by being forced to appear in it--that drove me out of the theater pulling my hair. I'm guessing the filmmakers decided to test audiences to see just how much of this boredom they would bear in the name of art.