Before bursting onto the international stage last year with his compelling performance in Jacques Audiard’s Rust and Bone, Matthias Schoenaerts was a 'Bullhead'. That is to say, he played the hulking lead in Michael R. Roskam’s gritty Belgian drama of the same name, which has finally arrived on British shores. Set amongst the seedy world of bovine hormone injections and the local mafia, Roskam’s Oscar-nominated debut feature is a noirish crime-drama built around a tragic and damaged protagonist.
Set in the rural locale of the Flemish region of Belgium, this is not a world of greenery and rolling hills, but mud-streaked farmyards and the enhanced fattening up of livestock. This practice has been commonplace for years and is the norm on the Vanmarsenilles’ cattle farm, presided over by the brooding Jacky (Schoenaerts). Keeping back just enough hormones to sate his own distressing injection habit, Jacky is a terrifying presence, bullish in temperament as well as physique. It is not just his muscles that ripple beneath the surface, but a time-bomb of repressed aggression threatening to explode with every anxious twitch.
When a police officer investigating the hormone black market is killed, it sets in motion a course of events that brings trouble to the Vanmarsenilles’ door. Part of this sees the return of Jacky’s childhood friend, Diederik (Jeroen Perceval), which triggers flashbacks through which we come to learn the tragic and brutal cause of Jacky’s reticence, and the origin of his addiction. This has also led to a long-standing and somewhat obsessive infatuation with a local woman, Lucia (Jeanne Dandoy).
A phenomenal performance from Schoenaerts, who reputedly put on around 30kg of weight for the role, makes Bullhead essential viewing on its own. Regrettably, what might have been a truly masterful character study of this Minotaur with masculinity issues is hampered by convoluted plotting and extraneous characters. By packing in too much of the criminal underworld and wider national comment, some real drama is left a little undercooked; the relationship with Lucia would have benefited from more time to simmer.
The film feels as though Roskam’s idea for a crime drama was usurped. A superior story emerged, the intimate portrait of a gripping and wretched character, but the director didn’t want to entirely drop his original concept. Although this lack of focus is detrimental, it still makes for a fascinating watch, and Schoenaerts, the irresistible bulk at its centre. If Roskam had allowed Jacky Vanmarsenille to take up as much of the film as his body did the frame, Bullhead may have been a masterpiece; he didn’t, but it’s still very much worth catching if you get the chance.