One of the most underrated gems of the year as a Romanian construction worker encounters a Belgian-Chinese doctoral student of moss, with Devos’ exceptional sensitivity towards the audiovisual experience affording us a sense of quietude and calm quite rarely felt in today’s European cinema.

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I’ve heard of Belgian director Bas Devos before, but here I am finally taking a leap of faith with his latest film, Here.  This is one of the finest examples of how to do slow cinema economically. 

Running at no more than 90 minutes, Here is one of the most underrated gems of the year and a transfixing experience from the get-go. 

Everything about the film is ‘small’ and ‘simple’ in scale and scope, but Devos transforms a seemingly non-consequential piece about a chance encounter between a Romanian construction worker and a Belgian-Chinese doctoral student into something intimately grand.  It’s about the grandeur of inner and outer nature, a cinema of serenity and serendipity. 

The moss Shuxiu studies daily in the field and in quietude holds infinite wisdom about life.  Mosses absorb moisture, prevent erosion and improve air quality.  They are here, there and everywhere. 

“Moss grows everywhere, but most people don’t notice it.”

Stefan is also here (and there) but not everywhere (…yet, in Shuxiu’s mind).  Devos shows us what it is like to plant a seed of romantic feeling and have the patience for it to blossom. 

Here then becomes a study of two people of different cultures and life goals inspecting each other by ‘mossing’ around; it’s cinema as biological, a text that is also textural as Devos’ exceptional sensitivity towards the audiovisual experience affords us a sense of meditative calm quite rarely felt in today’s European cinema. 

This is the more arthouse, much less talky companion piece to Linklater’s Before Sunrise (1995) and features one of the most exquisitely ambiguous denouements in 2023’s slate of movies.  It’s a film that I want to put on again in a neverending loop, with a comforting bowl of home-cooked soup.

Grade: A-

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Trailer: