A film of uncommon warmth and delicacy, Bas Devos’ Here confirms a newfound sense of style and maturity in the Belgian filmmaker’s work that first appeared in the finely tuned nocturne Ghost Tropic (2019). Like that clearly pivotal project, Devos’ fourth feature—which won the top prize in the Encounters section at this year’s Berlinale—finds the 39-year-old director levelling up by scaling down. Gone is the angst and dour social commentary of Violet (2014) and Hellhole (2019), replaced instead with an intimacy borne of a growing interest in the quaint and quotidian. Just as significant, Devos has found a way to channel both the multicultural and generational concerns of his first two films into something far less sweeping and prescriptive. Set over one night, Ghost Tropic follows an elderly Maghrebi cleaning woman on a long walk home through Brussels after she falls asleep on the subway, while Here depicts the unlikely kinship between a Romanian migrant labourer and a Chinese-Belgian bryologist whose fleeting interactions quietly affirm a sense of shared humanity unbeholden to notions of class, vocation, or nationality.
As opens, a group of construction workers are wrapping a day’s work on a building site. Stefan (Stefan Gota) is set to go on leave, and before heading home to see his mother in Romania he plans on spending a few days cleaning out his fridge, cooking, and saying goodbye to friends while his car his being repaired. Over homemade soup, Stefan commiserates with co-workers, acquaintances, and later his sister, a nurse whose job has also kept her away from home for far too long. One night during a rainstorm, Stefan ducks into a small Chinese storefront café where he meets Shuxiu (Liyo Gong), a doctoral student working part-time at the restaurant to help out her aunt while she spends the days studying mosses. When Stefan and Shuxiu unexpectedly cross paths again a short
