I have seen this movie several times, and it remains as one of my favorites. Too bad it isn't offered in DVD format. It is about a man who is haunted by his past, and a love for one woman. It is an exploration of obsessions, memory, and one's self. This movie is interesting because in the story the main character "finds" his obsession after many years, and the ramifications of that. I would definitely recommend.

The 1991 Belgian film "Toto le Heros" ("Toto the Hero") is a slick little expressionistic allegory which should be extremely depressing as it presents the process of living as a damned if you do-damned if you don't choice. And that choice as something which is made for each person by their basic nature and the events that shape their early life. The film follows two childhood neighbors who were born about the same time but into very different circumstances. Their parallel destinies occasionally touch each other and finally merge at the end, although the end is shown at the beginning and the story then told in a series of fluid non-linear flashbacks. It is the only film that begins with a person simultaneously choking on a sweet, being shot in the back, strangling in a curtain, and drowning.

While most of the flashbacks are done realistically there are some with an expressionistic style; those linked together by the catchy theme song "When Your Heart Goes Boom" are especially cool. Also noteworthy is the shelf of toy soldiers who march to their destruction as the plane's vibrations topple them off the edge.

Thomas Van Hasebroeck (teasingly nicknamed Van Chickensoup) is a lifelong dreamer because he fears action and commitment after his precocious sister (Alice) is killed because of his demands that she do something that will prove she still loves him. As an old man he finds himself filled with regret over lost opportunities and unfulfilled heroic dreams (insert the title here).

His counterpart, Alfred, lives life as a man of action and privilege, whose life of wrong choices leaves him with a lot of enemies and at least as many regrets as Thomas. From an early age Thomas envied Alfred, even concocting a fantasy about the two of them being switched at birth. Ironically, Alfred has lived his whole life envious of Thomas's seemingly unencumbered life.

Ultimately the story is less depressing than one would expect. In part because of a fair amount of humor and whimsy but also because of the introduction of a third alternative to living. Celestin is Thomas's developmentally disabled brother, content with just appreciating what life offers, an allegorical representation of the "stop and smell the roses" idea. Celestin is very loving and very much at peace with his existence, in one scene he is contently lying on the grass tuned into the movement of a mole tunneling in the ground beneath him.

Sandrine Blancke was especially good as Alice, whose sudden adolescent flowering leaves both Thomas and Alfred hopelessly in love with her; a love that will torment them both for the rest of their lives. My favorite scenes are Alice's determined confrontations with the Blessed Virgin after her father's disappearance.

A big strength of "Toto le Heros" is the directing. There is not a single weak performance, especially amazing because the main characters are portrayed by a succession of actors of differing ages. Writer-director Jaco Van Dormael and his make-up people are the real "Heros" as their physical casting and make-up effects provide utterly believable visual examples of each character at different life stages. It is like watching persons literally age before your eyes.

Then again, what do I know? I'm only a child.

Thomas is a bitter old man who feels he has been cheated out of the life that was rightly his because he and another boy were switched at birth during a fire at the hospital. Alfred, the other boy, lives a life of privilege and becomes rich. Thomas is jealous. But in another sense Thomas needs to believe that he was switched because he falls in love with his sister Alice. If he really was switched, they are not related.

This is just one of the ironic witticisms spun out by Jaco van Dormael, who wrote and directed this striking and totally original bit of life triumphant. Veteran French actor Michel Bouquet plays Thomas as an old man, sneaking cigarettes in the old folks home, reliving his memories, plotting his revenge. Jo De Backer plays Thomas as a slightly nerdish young man, consumed by the loss of his beloved sister in a fire when she was about eleven or twelve. One day by accident he spots a woman who reminds him of his sister. He follows her, they fall in love, and it turns out she is married to Alfred! Thomas Godet plays the little boy Thomas with charm and a touching vulnerability. He is picked on and bullied by Alfred and his friends who taunt him with, "van Chickensoup!" (I wonder if the French Academie approves of this vulgar Anglais.) Sandrine Blancke plays Thomas's cute and impish older sister. Mireille Perrier plays Evelyne, who is the woman who reminds Thomas of his sister.

In a sense this is a romantic comedy, but be warned that in the French cinema a hint of incest is seldom looked on as shocking, rather as something almost akin to nostalgia. And certainly every woman should have a lover and every man a mistress. In another sense this is an art film that plays with time, using both flashbacks and flash forwards to present a story filled with spooky coincidences, punctuated with fantasy and a kind of naturalistic glorification of life epitomized in the catchy tune, "Boom!" that weaves its way in and out of the story, a tune you might have trouble getting out of your head, so be forewarned. ("Boom! When your heart goes boom! It's love, love, love!" written and performed by Charles Trenet.) There is also as aspect of sentimentality, especially in the resolution, that provides a sweet contrast with the naturalistic pathos. When the words that Alice spoke as a child are reprised by Evelyne (although she could not have known what Alice had said) we are delighted, and Thomas is a little rattled.. ("Do you like my hands?" she asks, holding them up. "Which hand do you prefer?")

The bitter old man learns that he really had the better of it all along (and so he does somewhat the opposite of what he had intended) and indeed we in the audience realize that how we might feel about life, looking back on it, might really just depend on how we choose to feel about it. Dormael's message seems to be that love makes life worth living. We are left with the sense that there is a time for love, and that time passes, and we have to accept that and celebrate the memory.

Best scene: Ten-year-old Thomas sees his perhaps 11-year-old sister rising out of the bath tub. (We see only his widening eyes; this is a discreet movie.) He says, "I...didn't know you had breasts." She replies (deadpanning the pride of a pre-adolescence girl), "I thought you'd read about them in the newspapers."

The premise to this film is fascinating in itself: believing from as far as one can remember that one was switched at birth with the kid across the street. Of course, the other kid is far more priviliged and as a result, tremendously obnoxious. What Jaco Van Dormael ("The Eighth Day") does with this story is quite amazing. He seems to be exempt from the capacity of self-censoring. He is willing to try everything and anything and does, succeeding in most of his attempts (particularly the montage earlier in the film of the family singing a snappy tune on the piano as the flowers in the garden move to the rhythms of the song!) However, "Toto..." is not a walk in the park. It is a very complicated film with a fascinating structure which jumps from future to past to present without any problem. With this film, Van Dormael accomplishes the very difficult chore of making his characters sympathetic and not repulsive.(a major part of the plot is an implied incestual relationship)The praise for this film was grandiose and it was honored with an Academy Award nomination for Best Foreign Language Film.

I can't get my friends to watch this (always beware the big bad french films) but they don't know what they are missing! I never tire of seeing this movie. I always find something new. And hey, give me dancing tulips anyday.