‘The Falling Star’ Review: Abel and Gordon Stumble With Odd Blend of Silent Comedy and Film Noir
variety.comPeter Debruge Chief Film Critic Next time someone wistfully insists, “They don’t make ’em like they used to,” why not point that nostalgic cinephile to the work of Dominique Abel and Fiona Gordon?
The Belgium-based creative couple are almost single-handedly keeping the classic burlesque tradition alive on screen — if the word “single-handedly” can fairly be used to describe a near-silent comic duo with four hands between them, plus a growing company of collaborators (including dancer Kaori Ito) and a prosthetic arm with a mind of its own.
In “The Falling Star,” Abel and Gordon bring their old-school comedic sensibility to what could loosely be described as a detective story, told in a film noir style punctuated with flashes of color: a red dress, a tiny green car, a bright yellow scooter.
Centered around a tiny Brussels bar, the pair’s relatively minor new project (a step back from 2017’s sublime “Lost in Paris,” which co-starred screen legends Emmanuele Riva and Pierre Richard) features a missing persons investigation, a sorta-kinda kidnapping, a fugitive couple tired of running and a one-armed assassin.
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