Thomas in Love
(Thomas est amoureux)
With Benoit Verhaert, Magali Pinglaut, Aylin Yay.
Belgium/France, 2000, 35mm, color, 98 min.
French with English subtitles.
Belgian filmmaker Pierre-Paul Renders studied classical philology, worked for Belgian television, and wrote four documentaries for the international aid organization Doctors Without Borders before directing this highly inventive first feature film, in which the latest in digital communications meets the oldest story in the world. Thomas is a pathologically reclusive thirty-something tied to the candy-colored graphics of his computer screen. His hermetic world is turned upside down when his psychiatrist signs him up for an Internet dating service and his big-brother insurance company provides him with online prostitutes for the emotionally impaired. As low-grade video-conferencing images begin to invade his carefully controlled world, we log on to Renders’s fascinating reflections on the aesthetic and philosophical implications of the information age.