Toto the Hero (1991) User Reviews (33)

Grass is always greener at the neighbor's house

[Cinemaquebecois · 8/10 · 8 December 1998]

The first movie from Belgium director Jaco Van Dormael is pure magic. It's what cinema should always be.

I've just seen the movie, for the third time, on TV past midnight yesterday and I couldn't close my eyes. Why ? Because Van Dormael knows how to tell a story. Also, you become very attached to all the character, bad and good one.

The cinematography give you the impression that you are dreaming. The camera is so light and the colors are so bright so you know that the imagination of Thomas, the "Toto" from the title, is working very hard to remember exactly what happened in his childhood.

If you love a good story with a very interesting plot, this is the one.

A charming view of ones memory of life's journey

[edchin2006 · 6/10 · 1 May 2010]

For a film which goes from here to there and back and forth, it seems odd that it loses its way for a good 15-20 minutes.

There is a lot of appeal in a childlike view of the world. That we may be jolted back into "reality", does not diminish the charm. As the story unfolds, we are drawn into the life of a child/man or man/child. That matters not; it is fascinating - the way it is told.

Then, the tale seems to lose direction, and as interesting as the telling is, a wandering story line diminishes interest in the tale; and, it begins to drag.

The ending brings things back together again; and, but for a few aimless moments, we are brought back to a fascinating world of one person's imagination and reality.

Before Le Huitième Jour we had Toto Le Héros, another great movie from Jaco Van Dormael.

[deloudelouvain · 8/10 · 29 November 2020]

Although I'm from Belgium I don't consider myself as biased to review Toto Le Héros. Jaco Van Dormael is a great director and Toto Le Héros was his first movie that got international attention, and for a good reason. The story is about a man holding a lifetime grudge, his life is only focussed on his neighbors success which he can't get over it. It's a simple story that goes back an forth in the future, past and present, beautifully narrated by Michel Bouquet that has an enjoyable voice to listen to. The acting of the whole cast is on top, from the youngest to the eldest they all gave a very good performance. Jaco Van Dormael will later have another huge movie that was nominated for a Golden Globe, Le Huitième Jour, where he again gave the autistic actor Pascal Duquenne a chance to show he can act, only this time as the major character. Jaco Van Dormael doesn't make tons of movies, but he makes significant ones. Toto The Hero is one of the movies that put Belgium on the map for cinema. Good movie that will please most of his audience.

The Genius of Small Things

[David Allison · 3 August 2001]

Jaco van Dormael, I love you. When I first saw this film in a dilapidated arts cinema in Cambridge on a cold winter's night, I wasn't expecting much. The only review I'd read was mildly sniffy. It was French, it was about la condition humaine. I thought it'd be a reasonable way to pass a couple of hours.

When I emerged from that dark pit of a cinema, I felt, at least for a while, as if my eyesight had been transformed. As we walked back to my friend's flat, I became fixated on one thing after another - the rain upon the cobbles, the light on the church, the darkness of the sky - I felt about five years old all over again. Since then, this film has never been out of my top five. And probably never will.

That is not say it's perfect. It's message is perhaps a little too bleak for my liking, and it does indulge itself in the precept that life it utterly meaningless. But how the visuals of the film contradict that sentiment! Every shot filled with colour, with life, with imagination.

In a way, Toto is an old-fashioned film - a thriller in the Third Man/Citizen Kane mold - a complex story unfolding in a semi-linear fashion, in this case throughout one man's whole life. Dour realism this certainly ain't. A wonderfully naive 40s (?) style chanson reappears, as the adult 'Van Chickensoup' watches his dead father sing from the back of a truck in front of him. Flowers sway in time to the song. The child truly believes that his father met his mother by landing in the garden from a parachute. Scene after scene of joyful play follow each other.

But this is no art-house foppery. This is a tight, mean, well-constructed tale about the feeling that dogs us all - is this all life is? Could I have been happier as someone else? Are they happier than me? Am I lucky or unlucky? And most importantly, this: Why, when life seems so hard at times, can we find so much joy in small things, in a flower, or a kiss, or crazy weather, or new clothes?

Forget the French subtitles, a fact that seems to put off so many North American and British viewers, forget the 'art-house' tag. I own this film and have shown it to scores of friends, all of whom have walked away astonished at its vision. I assure you that you will love this film.

It's alright, you don't have to thank me, spreading the word is enough. ;-) Watch it today! And then watch the Eighth Day, Van Dormael's astonishing second feature.

The Time it Was Yesterday at the Same Time

[WriterDave · 9/10 · 1 March 2003]

Ask me what time it is. Very very very strange and very entertaining bit of European cinema from Wacko Jaco Van Dormael, a former circus clown turned director. This film about fate, love, and childhood fantasies gone awry is very hard to describe. Imagine a kids film directed by Lars Von Trier, add a dash of "Amelie," a scent of "Donnie Darko," a sprinkle of Lynchian strangeness, and a good heaping of Terry Gilliam inspired wackiness, place in a blender, then travel back in time (as this movie came long before and probably inspired "Amelie" and "Donnie Darko") and voilà, you'll have "Toto." Sometimes heartbreaking, sometimes funny (everybody seems to love those dancing tulips), sometimes weird, always captivating, this is a film for people who enjoy non-linear and creative story-telling. Also, that much talked about floating plastic bag stuff from "American Beauty" is taken straight from this film's unforgettable final scenes. Dormael seemed to have so much good stuff going on in this film, it's ashame he's only made one film since this, as any film buff who watches it will no doubt imagine a few more great films being pulled out of Dormael's magician's hat.

Excellent movie about the extraordinary life of an ordinary man.

[Flix-4 · 10/10 · 18 October 1998]

Take a deep breath... and dive... The movie is about to take you in a journey trough an extraordinary life... Not very overwhelming, one might say... but the story of "Toto le héros" is an unpredictable tale about a man who always thought he was nobody, and found at the very end of his life, that he was, in fact, a hero...

The very simple storyline is a sketch, for director Jaco Van Dormael, to elaborate a complex visual narration. Since we follow the main character, Toto, throughout his whole life, the movie is full of "time games". Van Dormael uses flash-back and leap in time to get away from a simple linearity. The aproach to dreams is very similar to Terry Gilliam's that we've seen in "Brazil" and "12 Monkeys".

"Toto le héros" is a touching film that will please the movie critics as well as the common viewers.

It is a chef-d'oeuvre...

Hollywood ending?

[yc955 · 7/10 · 28 December 2007]

The only gripe I have with this film is the ending? Does it really necessary to make the rich kid with the 'good life' to envy the less fortunate one's for his 'freedom'? To get the protagonist killed to prove a point? Maybe the writing here is more of self expression than depicting human condition in general? Loud volume doesn't make the music more significant. Perhaps something could have left unsaid to the audience's imagination...

I always liked the French movies for there seemingly understated fashion over the dog barks of moral debate and preaching of the Anglo-American types - assuming the viewer is deaf and dumb. Well, the movie's ending is a bit surprise to me. Instead of letting the actors barking at each other, it chose to create a big bang with its twisted story line in the end. I certainly saw it coming after the middle point of the film. But still, I'd have no problem giving it 10 had it not been for the forced ending. I thought the biggest tragedy for people like Toto is that they never got anything right and nobody cares what they do or do not do. Therefore, to force Alfred to 'envy' Toto in the end and let Toto leave with a bang instead of a wimp is certainly gratifying to the audience, Hollywood style. But it feels very concocted and unnatural. Trying to force a tragedy into a comedy really is pointless. Because life really do sucks for folks like Toto.

"When Your Heart Goes Boom"

[aimless-46 · 9/10 · 12 November 2005]

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 adolescence 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.

A cherished regret!

[samxxxul · 7/10 · 11 May 2020]

Toto le héros tells a nostalgic story about shortcoming and love in flashbacks, forwards and with a dash of surrealism. Moving fluidly back and forth in time and space, an embittered old man by the name of Toto, (Thomas Godett) reflecting on his life, contemplates the revenge of his bitter enemy, his lifetime adversary, the man who stole his existence. Thomas is the main character of Toto le héros, he is convinced that he was traded in error at birth with another baby, his neighbour Alfred Kant who is the existential thief of all things good. The film is divided into three times: Thomas as a child, as an adult and as an elderly person, told in a complex narrative by old Thomas, we get to see what would have been the alternative to his relatively boring life and how Alfred's happiness should actually be his, there is also a secret agent angle which is filmed presented so beautifully. This is a fascinating example of storytelling which is a mix of romance with mystery and I hesitate to go into much detail about the plot for fear of spoiling the surprise, but I will say this story stands distinctly apart from the linear narrative drab, predictable plots, and neat endings that we are so used to in American movies. An absolute must see, especially for classic film buffs.

Bitter-sweet and surreal

[Cu-Top · 10/10 · 4 October 1999]

This movie is sheer visual poetry. Although it is in subtitles and I don't speak a lick of French, I found myself not needing to read the subtitles as the visuals told the entire story. This is rather impressive, as the story is very complicated. It tells the tale of one man's life by interweaving four different elements of his life: Childhood, Middle-Age, Old-Age, and a Film Noir Fantasy World. To give it even more of a chance of being confusing, these elements are not shown chronologically. However, "Toto..." is not confusing at all. It pulls off this complicated plot beautifully. This movie truly is a Modern Day Classic!! DVD? When? Criterion Edition!

A stolen life

[jotix100 · 7/10 · 27 February 2011]

Thomas, an old man confined to a nursing home, cannot help but to reflect on his life since he has nothing else to do. Thomas, of "Toto" as he was known by his family and friends, was a child that always thought he was changed at birth as the hospital where he was born is destroyed by a raging fire. The baby next to him, ironically, becomes his neighbor, and tormentor for most of his life.

Home life for Thomas was full of hardships. The loss of his aviator father in a plane crash marked him for life. The fact that the accident was provoked, in part, by Thomas' neighbor, Mr. Kant, the rich man next door, will perpetuate his resentment toward Alfred Kant. Thomas' mother had to make ends meet, having been left with three children. To make things more difficult, Celestin, the youngest brother suffered from autism.

Alice and Thomas became closer as the result of not having a father around. Thomas was prone to dream in cinematic terms, thinking he was going to avenge his father's death. In his reverie, he saw a gangster film where the Kants were given their due. Alice held an attraction over Thomas that was reflected later on when he was an adult in Evelyne, the wife of Alfred Kant, who happened to live in the home that stood next to his house. The older Thomas decides to escape the institution where he has been confined to take care of Alfred, now an older man, living by himself.

Jaco Van Dormael directed the film. He also collaborated on the screenplay. The director's choice of a non linear narrative might seem confusing for some viewers, but the end result is quite satisfying because one can see what his intentions were. Resentment, in many ways, played heavily on the Thomas' character. He went through life thinking his stolen life was lived by Alfred.

Michel Bouquet, the distinguished French actor, does a fine job as the older Thomas. The other stages of his life were played by two wonderful players, the young Jo De Backer and the adult Thomas Godet. Mireille Perrier is seen as the younger Evelyne. There is an excellent performance by Sandrine Blanke as Alice.

A kind of naturalistic delight

[DennisLittrell · 9/10 · 7 April 2002]

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 is 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."

(Note: Over 500 of my movie reviews are now available in my book "Cut to the Chaise Lounge or I Can't Believe I Swallowed the Remote!" Get it at Amazon!)

Major letdown. I wanted to like it, I really did, but I just couldn't.

[Atreyu_II · 4/10 · 17 November 2011]

Until seeing this, I had never seen a belgian film before. I wanted to see it partially because of its nationality and partially because its cover is so stylish that I expected good surprises. In the end, I expected too much without properly informing myself.

This film is nothing (and I mean, nothing!) of what it appears to be from the cover. That cover easily made me imagine a movie with space-age and futuristic visuals, a movie about a little boy who is a dreamer and often dreams of flying in space (imagining that was why he was holding an airplane in his hands). Well, in reality only 3 times there are scenes similar to that: early in the film when a space-like background with the title's film written in yellow appears; a ship shows up in a somewhat similar background; and after that only at the end when the same ship (from another angle of sight) appears in the same background.

That said, this belgian motion-picture coproduced with France and Germany tells the weird tale of a bitter old man named Thomas (Toto) who looks back in time and laments his course of life. He shares his story through a complicated mosaic of flashbacks together with fantasies about what he wished his life had been.

This movie makes use of admirable techniques such as a complex temporal structure combined with many dream sequences and many flashbacks. To make matters more difficult, sometimes the flashbacks flash simultaneously forward and back.

Thomas was born around the same time as Alfred and has always envied him. Because he was never happy or lucky, he thinks Alfred stole his life and even believes they were switched at birth after a fire in the nursery.

Although confusing and despite the incredible quickness of many shots, it's actually possible to understand well some parts.

I see that many people here on IMDb have very positive things to say about this film. I'm sorry, but I have to disagree. I like strange and complex movies, but this one was too much even for my standards.

What really shocked me was the disturbing things it contains. For example, Thomas is hungry for revenge and plans to murder Alfred. There is a scene when Thomas's father asks him to see his pretty airplane and the boy attacks him with the toy and the father bleeds. There is a scene when a woman starts bleeding from her head for no apparent reason. There is a child brother and sister in love with each other, they take baths together, sleep together and in one scene she keeps asking him opinions about parts of her body and he even gets to touch her boob. The children plan to burn the neighbor's house down. The girl even suicides by blowing up a house to show how much she loves the boy. The children destroy a statue of Our Lady. When grown up, Toto gets obsessed with another woman just because she looks like the sister who died in the explosion. And the movie displays (twice) a man that has been brutally murdered.

Had they done this very (and I mean, very!) differently, and it could have been a great movie.

a clever brilliant movie

[dbdumonteil · 30 December 2002]

Thomas, an elderly man lives in an old people's home. He's always been persuaded that he has been inverted with another baby called Alfred, during a fire at the maternity hospital. It means that he should have been Alfred, a wealthy and rough boy, cherished by his parents who fell in love with Thomas' sister, Alice. When he's a grown-up, he'll become a brilliant businessman whereas Thomas, him, will only live a dull and mournful life: his father will die early, he'll become a poor surveyor and when he feels love for a woman called Evelyne who looks like his late sister, Alice, he'll feel betrayed because Evelyne is Alfred's wife! His only way to escape from a destiny that is not the right one is to fancy himself as a secret agent (Toto le héros). So, in the old people's home, Thomas's got a sole idea: killing the "usurpator". Will he succeed in? For his first film, Jaco Van Doarmel showed cleverness, originality and talent. The movie is very close to Etienne Chatiliez's movie: "life is a long quiet river" but in this movie, everybody knew that the two babies had been voluntarily inverted and in Doarmel's film, Thomas remains the only one to be persuaed of being inverted. One of the feats of the film is that it never asserts this hypothesis. We see the fire but we don't know if the intervertion really happened... The movie works like a puzzle as Thomas's thoughts and memories pass by and it links several characters, in different places, at different times. It enables to reconstruct Thomas' bitter life. In parallel, you never lose the thread of the plot (Thomas aims at avenging himself against the one who stole his life). The film abounds in visual brainwaves and is very well served by a watertight screenplay. Moreover, there's an amazing contrast between Thomas's bitter life and Alfred's one (which would be Thomas's real life) that is cherished and successful. But, in the end, Alfred isn't as dreadful as he seems, because I noticed that when he was old, he seemed upset. He's probably marked by Evelyne's departure and don't forget that he's tracked down by terrorists. Always right and agile, the movie, sometimes, succeeds in creating touching moments( when Thomas discovers that Thomas's wife is Evelyne, the woman he loves). At last, Michel Bouquet is excellent in his role of tormented and disillusioned man. Like "eraserhead" by David Lynch, in another register, "Toto le héros" rank among the movies that you must see rather than telling it because it can be seen on several levels.

In praise of the modernist aspects of Toto

[mestos · 10/10 · 3 November 1999]

Toto the Hero is one of those rare films that improves with each viewing (and you will want to watch it again and again) there are enough levels going on to satisfy the hardened movie deconstructionist but at the same time the story-telling is engagingly simple and seemingly naive. At the surface level a narrative of lost love, mistaken identity, family tragedy, life/death and tulips. Dig deeper and there is a complex reflexive subtext about language and subject identity that encompasses philosophy, psychoanalysis and the role of the media itself. Joyce, Levi Strauss, Freud and Lacan are cited alongside countless references to cinema and television. Watch the opening of Billy Wilder's Sunset Boulevard or read the first page of Joyce's Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man after Toto and you may catch my drift. A truly superb piece of cinema that skillfully manages to avoid the post-modern posturing that condemns many of Van Dormael's contemporaries.

Don't miss it.

[cyclura-1 · 10/10 · 6 January 2005]

A most unusual cinematic treat. I happened on this film in the middle. I was so intrigued by it I scanned the TV guide for a month until I could see it from beginning to end.

There are more than many comments one can make on his own life. In this film we can make our own judgment on the life of Thomas the Hero. We know from the outset that he feels he has been cheated from his birthright. Can he regain what has been taken from him? Or has he been unable to comprehend the quality of his own life? These issues are dealt with in four stories told almost simultaneously.The resolution is at once redeeming and thought-provoking.

best movie of the last decade

[ja.mh · 10/10 · 30 December 1999]

Without "ifs" and "buts": this is the best movie of the last decade. Made by most gifted filmmaker of the last decade. It s unique in its wealth of ideas and complex structure. Thank you, Jaco - also for your second feature "Eight Day".

A complex story deeply moving

[imogenwooder · 9/10 · 27 April 2012]

I saw this film believing it to be comedy and less than halfway through felt deeply antagonistic to the director's idea of humour. A few minutes later, I realised my mistake and wept through the remainder of the film and again when I saw it next, and again! It is a story of a deeply flawed man with profoundly complex issues, some of which you can understand from his family history. As to whether he was switched at birth during a fire, or whether that was his way as a child of rationalising the inequalities between himself and his neighbour's child, that is open to question. His relationship with Evelyn and the way he identifies her with his dead sister, Alys, is a kind of idealisation. I am not entirely sure how much of the film is real and how much is wishful thinking on the part of Thomas. But whenever the theme music plays, the mood becomes both happy and sad.

Worth buying!

[davidgarvoille · 10/10 · 2 August 2005]

If you loved this film, and most people do, please help get the word out that this movie should be released for Region 1 DVD (US). I was able to find this on Region 2 DVD on Amazon.fr (Amazon France) but it was out of stock. What to do when the movie you love is unavailable?!?

I also recommend getting yourself a Charles Trenet cd who's song "Boum!" is used for the dancing tulips. I believe that he was a traitor during Nazi occupation, siding with the puppet French government...but he did remake his name before his death.

And yes, what a pity this director hasn't made more films. What gives? If you like this film, you might also like The Hairdresser's Husband which came out around the same time.

Kind of boring.

[smatysia · 3/10 · 13 November 2018]

Those who liked this film will likely say that I do not understand European cinema, and I suppose they may be right. The production values were OK. I wasn't bothered by the non-linear timeline of the story. But the whole film, overall, bored me. Sorry, Eurocinephiles.

Our Doppelgangers, Our Selves

[ThurstonHunger · 19 November 2000]

A hearty recommendation for this film, which deftly kaleidoscopes time. Three actors portray one life at various age stages, through them we see the innocence of childhood and the guilt of autumn years are two sides of the same coign of vantage.

The creative imagination of the protagonist (and the director) are well framed...and it was reassuring that some of the magic that our hero, Thomas, felt as a child stays with him throughout his life, and this film.

Minor caveats for people who

1) dislike non-linear time in a film

2) voice-over narration

But the distinct actors/times make #1 no problem here, better yet the dissolves between them are often lyrical...and I think more accurate to how we remember our time in this world.

Reaffirmed my belief of the power in charged details (shoes in a closet, a pop tune, candy wrappers) and my faith in the beautiful complexity of a simple life.

MAGIC

[konstantinanikolaou · 10/10 · 15 February 2022]

Perfect movie! Poetic with profound characters. It is more than a movie. It is magic. It is surreal, mad, complex and very human in a very weird way. Even if some characters and scenes are not realistic, I felt that every aspect of life is included. You cannot describe what you saw, only what you felt.

Superior Film-making-Ethereal Messages

[aciolino · 8/10 · 11 September 2008]

This is one of those rare films that can be enjoyed or appreciated on many levels separately, or all at once. The point is that it is very enjoyable at whatever level you take it.

For me, it is a profoundly moving film. It combines the comedy and frivolousness of the best of French film, with the most poignant and touching tragedy. The title provides much of the fodder for thought. Toto (what does that name mean?) the Hero. (Hero?) What kind of hero? Do you admire his heroism? Is it misplaced? Is it an act of self-sacrifice or...something else... What is a "hero"? Do we need them? Why? And where do they come from, what causes one man, a seemingly ordinary man, to perform an heroic act? Is he all of us? Is this potential inside us all? Delight in the asking of these questions, then delight in answering , some of them, one of them....none of them. This film is a fable, with all the potential whimsy and ambiguity therein.

Enjoy.

Toto Le Héros/Toto the hero-A cult film directed by Jaco Van Dormael.

[FilmCriticLalitRao · 8/10 · 15 August 2013]

What happens to a person when a small, crazy idea becomes an obsession ? Any obsession has no meaning unless efforts are made to take it to fruition. This is something which has been nicely described by Belgian director Jaco Van Dormael in "Toto the Hero". As a film about the change of identities, there is a good depiction of family atmospheres in the narrative where one gets to see the major protagonists at different stages of their lives. This effect is created by showing all the three major stages of a person's life namely childhood, adulthood and old age. There is a wise usage of time as events related to the protagonists' lives moves back and forth between past and the present, old age, youth and childhood in order to give viewers an idea about the stage where the things must have gone wrong. It is not so often that revenge gets transformed into pardon in a film. However, Toto-our film's hero shows that he is really a true hero as he sacrifices his obsession in order to achieve overall feeling of greatness. He achieves that distinction by forgoing violence and revenge. Lastly, it must be told that "Toto Le Héros" is not really a film for intellectuals. However, cinema is believed to have scored a minor victory over "Philosophy" as one of the villainous characters of this film is called Kant.

Cu-Top says it all

[kols · 10/10 · 17 April 2012]

Cu-Top said it all. Only thing I can add is that it seems to start slowly and, if you have a prejudice against self-absorbed European (especially French) movies, this might suggest just another Celt trying to fellate himself.

Instead, it turns out to be a virtually perfect story of self-deception and the choices that back-fire as a result, told at a deliberate pace, and which you care about because we all share some level of that deception.

Again, Cu-Top's review hits the mark; take this little gem seriously.

Another line.

Another line.

Another line.

Why does IMDb insist on ten lines?