Troublemaker

The movie that elevated both main actor Thierry van Werveke and director Andy Bausch to national stardom.

You might think that's not much considering the country's tiny size, but for many Luxembourgers it's a corner stone of national cinematographic history.

This film contains a lot of cult scenes many Luxembourgers are able to recite word by word. We even saw it when we were still primary school pupils, although the film's not a kids' movie. Quite the contrary because there are sex and violent scenes in it.

We were simply happy it's been a film in which people spoke Luxembourgish and which took place at places we knew being used to watch almost exclusively foreign movies taking place abroad.

It's also a love letter to the Minette region in the south-west, which at that moment still suffered the repercussions of the major steel industry crisis that hit the region in the 1970s. It definitely shows Luxembourg is not just rich people.

For those times, and taking in account it probably didn't have a big budget, the film's generally well shot and its mostly bluesy soundtrack, some of it even played live, sets the mood right.

There are just two things I crticise: First in some scenes the lighting is too weak, a downer compared to most other scenes. Secondly they speak too much German in this film. Unfortunately they probably had to, because Troublemaker is a German-Luxembourgish co-production. But in the end it also gave us a few scenes with people speaking German with a heavy Luxembourgish accent, which is always hilarious and relatable to.

I get it though if you rate this film lowly, you have to understand Luxembourgish to fully appreciate it.

Well, when you get to see this movie as a neutral spectator, there is a lot to complain about; sound is weak, camera and picture quality have remained somewhere in the late 1970s (although the movie is of 1988)and acting seems sluggish! But! This film is about what the South of Luxembourg and shows a picture of the minette region(region in the S of Lux.) after the decline of the steel industry in the late 70s like no movie has done before.Furthermore this is the sort of movie that gives you the wonderful feeling of portraying your country in a way that has never ever been seen on a screen (you know, there are not to many movies about Luxembourg around). Surely the movie is only a caricature of the real situation and it is difficult for someone who has never been to Luxembourg and has never got in touch especially with the people of the South of the country to realize the value of the movie and to understand the comedian value of, for example, luxembourgish police units and amateur bank robbers acting on screen. It is sure that this movie shows kind of jerks how they try to manage to get to do their business and survive; but this special portrait of less privileged people in their struggle between jail and somewhat "normal" lives fascinates especially in the context of a country like Luxembourg. Nevertheless, brilliantly funny (especially some Luxembourgish actors speaking French and German with a spectacular luxembourgish accent).