Baffled. Befuddled. Bewildered. That about sums up my experience watching JCVD, one of the most anticipated movies at this year’s Fantastic Fest. The advance buzz on the film was flush with comparisons to Being John Malkovich, but that’s a reach. Maybe it’s just that I’m not steeped in the minutiae of Jean-Claude Van Damme’s career, or there’s something about the Belgian sensibility that eludes me, but while it certainly has its moments, JCVD mainly left me scratching my head.

Van Damme himself stars as washed-up action star Jean-Claude Van Damme, embroiled in a custody suit in Los Angeles and hard up for cash. It’s been a long time since he headlined a Hollywood movie and now even the low-budget straight-to-DVD action roles are going to Steven Seagal instead. (“He promised to cut off his ponytail.”) Van Damme returns to Brussels, where he’s still regarded as a local hero. While attempting to arrange a wire transfer at the post office, he is taken hostage along with everyone else inside. Capitalizing on a misunderstanding, the real robbers use Van Damme as a front, making the police and his adoring fans believe that it is the action hero who has snapped and taken the hostages.

I guess this is a funny idea, but JCVD isn’t going strictly for laughs. There are moments played for comedy, as when one of the robbers prevails on Van Damme to perform the “kicking a cigarette out of a guy’s mouth” routine. But I couldn’t help but wonder what was going through the head of the Muscles from Brussels in more dramatic scenes, such as when his young daughter confesses she’s embarrassed by him. After the screening, I had to check out Van Damme’s Wikipedia page to assess whether the biographical information presented in the film had any basis in reality. It turns out much of it does; the actor had a drug problem in the mid-90s, and his marriage fell apart under allegations of spousal abuse (one area JCVD doesn’t get into, unsurprisingly).

Also per Wikipedia, “In the French-speaking world, Van Damme is well known for the picturesque aphorisms that he delivers on a wide range of topics (personal well-being, ecology, etc.) in a sort of Zen franglais. Most iconic and often quoted was his repeated use of the English word aware during an interview for a French channel, to convey the notion of self-awareness as a key to success.” This sheds some light on the movie’s most bizarre, yet oddly spellbinding sequence, a five-minute monologue Van Damme delivers in one unbroken take midway through the film. It’s a rambling self-examination, surely the most nakedly emotional moment of his career, but it doesn’t co-exist easily with the goofier elements of JCVD. Maybe this experience was therapeutic for him, but the question remains – at least for those of us who have never been fans: Who cares?

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