The final instalment in Lucas Belvaux's genre-busting trilogy, After Life brings the cycle to an impressive conclusion.
Styled as a melodrama, this follows bent copper Pascal (Gilbert Melki) as he struggles to investigate the prison break from Trilogie 1 and play private detective for Cécile (Ornella Muti) from the farcical Trilogie 2. He also has to find time to keep his junkie wife in free smack...
Although Belvaux claims that each film can be viewed as a separate entity, it's only when the pieces of this genre jigsaw puzzle are placed together that the point of such a bold cinematic experiment become clear. Taking genre cinema to the known limits and way beyond, the Belgian director challenges the conventions of the thriller, farce and melodrama, while alerting us to the fact that even the slightest characters have a story waiting to be told. You'll never look at a random extra in quite the same way again.
