''Toto the Hero'' () is a 1991 Belgian film (co-produced with France and Germany) by Belgian

film director A film director or filmmaker is a person who controls a film's artistic and dramatic aspects and visualizes the screenplay (or script) while guiding the film crew and actors in the fulfillment of that Goal, vision. The director has a key role ...

and

screenwriter A screenwriter (also called scriptwriter, scribe, or scenarist) is a person who practices the craft of writing for visual mass media, known as screenwriting. These can include short films, feature-length films, television programs, television ...

Jaco Van Dormael Jaco Van Dormael (born 9 February 1957) is a Belgium, Belgian film director, screenwriter and playwright. His films especially focus on a respectful and sympathetic portrayal of people with mental and physical disability, disabilities. Van Dorm ...

. It won the

Caméra d'Or The Caméra d'Or ("''Golden Camera''") is an award of the Cannes Film Festival for the best first feature film presented in one of the Cannes selections (Official Selection, Directors' Fortnight or Critics' Week). The prize was created in 1978 Ca ...

award at the

Cannes Film Festival The Cannes Film Festival (; ), until 2003 called the International Film Festival ('), is the most prestigious film festival in the world. Held in Cannes, France, it previews new films of all genres, including documentaries, from all around ...

in 1991, and the

César Award for Best Foreign Film The Académie des Arts et Techniques du Cinéma, sponsored by France and Canada, presents an annual César Award for Best Foreign Film (). This is the list of winners and nominees of the award since the 1970s. Winners and nominees 1970s 1980s ...

in 1992. The film was selected as the Belgian entry for the Best Foreign Language Film at the 64th Academy Awards, but was not accepted as a nominee.

Plot

Ostensibly set in the near future, the film tells the life story of an elderly man named Thomas Van Hasebroeck (who has dubbed himself Toto, after a childhood fantasy), looking back on his ordinary, apparently uneventful life in a complex mosaic of flashbacks, interspersed with fantasies about how events might have turned out differently. It is not always possible to tell the difference between embellished or manufactured memories and fantasies, as Thomas is a very

unreliable narrator In literature, film, and other such arts, an unreliable narrator is a narrator who cannot be trusted, one whose credibility is compromised. They can be found in a wide range from children to mature characters. While unreliable narrators are al ...

, but some scenes (such as the narrative thread that features Toto as a

secret agent Espionage, spying, or intelligence gathering, as a subfield of the intelligence field, is the act of obtaining secret or confidential information (intelligence). A person who commits espionage on a mission-specific contract is called an ''e ...

) are definitely fantasized. Thomas firmly believes his life to have been "stolen" from him by Alfred Kant, born at the same time as Thomas, who Thomas believes was inadvertently switched with himself as a baby (characteristically, the film remains ambiguous as to whether this substitution ever actually happened, with Thomas' only substantiation being his apparent vivid memory of the day he was born). Thomas' jealousy of Alfred has overshadowed all his life, often with tragic consequences for his loved ones, and he is plotting revenge. Throughout most of the film, his intended revenge takes the shape of a plot to kill Alfred, but in the end Thomas finds a more creative and surprising way to "take back" his life.

Cast

Michel Bouquet Michel François Pierre Bouquet (6 November 1925 – 13 April 2022) was a French stage and film actor. He appeared in more than 100 films from 1947 to 2020. He won the Best Actor European Film Award for '' Toto the Hero'' in 1991 and two Best ...

as Thomas (old man) * Jo De Backer as Thomas (adult) * Thomas Godet as Thomas (child) *

Gisela Uhlen Gisela Uhlen (16 May 1919 – 16 January 2007) was a German film actress and occasional screen writer. Biography Uhlen was born Gisela Friedlinde Schreck (German national library entry) in Leipzig, Germany as fourth child of Luise Frieda a ...

as Evelyne (old woman) * Mireille Perrier as Evelyne (young woman) * Sandrine Blancke as Alice * Michel Robin as Alfred (old's voice) *

Peter Böhlke Peter may refer to: People * List of people named Peter, a list of people and fictional characters with the given name * Peter (given name) ** Saint Peter (died 60s), apostle of Jesus, leader of the early Christian Church * Peter (surname), a su ...

as Alfred (old man) * Didier Ferney as Alfred (adult) * Hugo Harold Harrison as Alfred (child) * Fabienne Loriaux as Thomas' Mother * Klaus Schindler as Thomas' Father * Pascal Duquenne as Celestin (adult) * Karim Moussati as Celestin (child) * Didier De Neck as Mr. Kant * Christine Smeysters as Mrs. Kant * Jo Deseure as Sales Woman * Bouli Lanners as Gangster

Release

The film is available on DVD in the UK and mainland Europe. It was released on Blu-Ray in the UK and United States in August 2020 by Arrow Academy, with documentaries on the making of the film ('Memories of Hero') and on

François Schuiten François Schuiten (; born 26 April 1956) is a Franco-Belgian comics, Belgian comic book artist. He is best known for drawing the series ''Les Cités Obscures''. Biography François Schuiten was born in Brussels, Belgium, in 1956.De Weyer, Geert ...

('François Schuiten, Architect of an Unfinished Dream').

Reception

Vincent Canby Vincent Canby (July 27, 1924 – October 15, 2000) was an American film and theatre critic who was the chief film critic for ''The New York Times'' from 1969 until the early 1990s, then its chief theatre critic from 1994 until his death in 2000. ...

gave the film an enthusiastic review in ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''NYT'') is an American daily newspaper based in New York City. ''The New York Times'' covers domestic, national, and international news, and publishes opinion pieces, investigative reports, and reviews. As one of ...

'', calling it "an enormously witty, bittersweet comedy" that "is both shocking and elegiacal." He wrote that "the film has the density of a fine short story, written by a master who somehow manages to create a novel-sized world through an uncanny command of ellipsis" and praised "Van Dormael's extraordinary gift for the simultaneous expression of utterly contradictory emotions." '' Variety'' described the film as "a winning blend of kid's fantasy and adult comedy that's as fresh as a hot croissant." ''Time Out'' called it "an immensely vibrant, inventive, compassionate movie", and added that though Van Dormael has "an engagingly witty eye for the absurd", he has rooted his film "in ''emotional'' reality, so that Thomas' life, loves, desires and anxieties take on great poignancy."

Roger Ebert Roger Joseph Ebert ( ; June 18, 1942 – April 4, 2013) was an American Film criticism, film critic, film historian, journalist, essayist, screenwriter and author. He wrote for the ''Chicago Sun-Times'' from 1967 until his death in 2013. Eber ...

admitted it was "an interesting film", and remarked that he would have liked it more "if it had been more bitter and unforgiving; if someone like Bunuel had directed it". On

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website

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, the film holds an approval rating of 91%, based on 11 reviews, and an average rating of 7.7/10. The film had admissions of 477,000 in France and 500,000 from Italy, the United Kingdom, Germany, Netherlands and Spain. In Brussels, it was the seventh most popular film of the year (and most popular Belgian film) with a gross of 16.9 million

Belgian franc The Belgian franc was the currency of the Kingdom of Belgium from 1832 until 2002 when the euro was introduced. It was subdivided into 100 subunits, each known as a in Dutch, or in French and German. History The ''gulden'' (guilder) of 20 ''st ...

References

External links

*
TOTO LES HEROS
at