By KENNETH TURAN, Times Film Critic|February 20, 2009 "Moscow, Belgium" is as wonderfully contradictory as its title. A realistic romantic comedy with considerable raffish charm and a great spirit, it looks at love's struggles with an offbeat but very human eye.  That title is not a misprint or an exercise in fantasy geography; it's the name of a neighborhood in the Belgian city of Ghent, where the film is set. An impressive debut for Flemish-speaking director Christophe Van Rompaey, the film deals candidly with where love comes from and where it goes. It's the kind of urban romance that hard-core fellow Belgians the Dardenne brothers might make if they ever did that kind of thing. --LA Times February 20 - 2009Disappointment and suspicion emanate like perspiration from Matty (Barbara Sarafian), the central character in the Belgian director Christophe van Rompaey s small, serious comedy, Moscow, Belgium. A blond, slightly bedraggled 41-year-old mother of three (think of Frances McDormand with Joni Mitchell hair), Matty works in a post office and lives in a factorylike housing development in Ledeberg, a working-class neighborhood on the outskirts of Ghent.  Matty s somewhat younger husband, Werner (Johan Heldenbergh), who teaches art, left her several months earlier to live with a 22-year-old student, and Matty is still smarting. In her tense encounters with Werner, she refers to his midlife crisis with bitter sarcasm. Although their marriage hasn t officially ended, Matty behaves as if she is already resigned to living the rest of her life without a man. As the movie follows her around, it is very specific about the age, social status, personal history and romantic suitability of every man she encounters.  We watch her cooking dinner for her children: blood sausages with mustard on one night, chicken stew on another. Vera (Anemone Valcke) is a mildly rebellious girl about to turn 17 who is dating another girl her own age; that Vera might be gay doesn t seem to bother Matty. The younger daughter, Fien (Sofia Ferri), experiments with tarot cards and offers impromptu readings to which Matty gives a little more credence than they probably deserve; her third child, Peter (Julian Borsani), also pre-adolescent, hopes to be a pilot someday. The movie s steady attention to detail lends it a texture rarely found in films about domestic life. Its eye and ear for the particular and for what is left unsaid in tense conversation is unerring. Ms. Sarafian s natural and expressive performance allows Matty to snap into sharp focus like a digital photograph. By the movie s half-hour point you may feel as though you have lived with her for several weeks. Matty s life changes one afternoon when she accidentally backs her car into a truck while leaving a shopping center. After she and the other driver, Johnny (Jurgen Delnaet), exchange threats and insults, their rage subsides and they negotiate with guarded civility. The next day when he arrives unbidden to repair the minor damage to her car, he asks her out for a drink. A wary courtship develops: Johnny, whose girlfriend left him for a well-to-do lawyer, ardently pursues Matty; she, after offering stiff resistance, succumbs to his advances against her better judgment.  Just as Matty has lost faith in men, Johnny has decided that most women are bloodsuckers, but she is different, he insists. Good-natured most of the time, he has a history of violence, especially when drinking (he is now a teetotaler), and the scary moments in which he loses control give Matty serious pause.  But just below her hard-bitten exterior hovers a passionate, impulsive lover longing to be re-awakened. The minute Werner learns there might be another man in her life, he is seized with possessive jealousy and campaigns to be taken back. In the movie s funniest (but also queasy-making) scene, Werner and Johnny verbally joust over chicken stew.  Here and there, especially in a recurrent post office motif, Moscow, Belgium is too tidy. But even then it is psychologically accurate. If you have observed its banal situations in countless other movies, not to mention in your own life, it is unusual to find them explored with such matter-of-fact truthfulness. Matty, Johnny and Werner are uncomfortably familiar versions of ourselves. --NEW YORK TIMES December 19-2008by Roger Ebert She backs up her car. His big truck runs into it. She should have looked first. A truck that size shouldn't have been in a parking lot. They get out and start screaming insults at each other. This all occurs in a Flemish-speaking city in Belgium. We quickly learn that the f-word sounds exactly the same in English and Flemish.  Now here is the intriguing element. They are both livid with anger. Their insults escalate from their driving abilities to their genders. Women are bloodsuckers. Men are -- never mind what men are. At some point, very subtle and hard to define, their insults turn into play. No, they don't start grinning. They still both seem angry. But they grow verbally inventive, and we sense, and they sense, a shift in the weather. It ends with him asking her out for coffee. The buried emotions in this scene play out all through "Moscow, Belgium," an uncommon comedy that is fairly serious most of the time. She is Matty (Barbara Sarafian), 41 years old. He is Johnny (Jurgen Delnaet), in his late 20s. Matty's husband has walked out on her and her three kids. Johnny's girlfriend left him for some rich dude. Johnny has fallen helplessly in love with Matty, possibly because he has met his match in insults, possibly because a woman who can think that fast on her feet can -- never mind what she can do. Their working-class neighborhood of Ghent is named Moucou, with high-rises, heavy traffic, rough bars. Johnny lives here in the sleeping compartment of his truck cab. He is friendly, has eyes that smile, hair she would probably love to take a brush to. Her hair is a slightly tidier mess. She has no desire to meet a man, especially one that much younger. Her husband, Werner (Johan Hildenbergh), an art teacher, left her for a little tart who was one of his students. One cradle robber is enough for her family. Now about her kids. They are individuals intent on their own lives and indifferent to the fact that they are in a movie. Here's what I mean by that. Ever notice how in a lot of movies the family members are playing Family Members? The kids are arrayed around the dinner table, smoothly fitting into their dialogue. Matty's kids are Vera, a daughter about 17 who regards her mother with weary insight; a younger daughter, Fien, who is going through a stage of reading everyone's Tarot cards and relates to you as if you're the Hanging Man or the Fool, and a still younger son, Peter, who is obsessed with airplanes. Johnny comes for dinner, but they're indifferent to him or, in Vera's case, tactfully withdrawn. Werner turns up when he hears about his wife's young boyfriend, and they all share a family meal that I suspect owes something to Mike Leigh's family occasions of awkward, weird embarrassment. Matty has to choose: the faithless husband who is a handsome jerk, or the love-struck truck driver with a disturbing past and good reasons to never, ever drink again. The audience would advise her against both. Underneath it all rolls the rhythm of Matty's real life. Men can come and go, but someone needs to put food on the table, do the shopping, be a parent. Matty has a job in the post office, where half the customers seem to know her. This is not the greatest job, but it's what she has. She understands Johnny's pride in his truck. It is all he has, but it is his. He can come and go with the freedom of a ranch hand. Werner, however, sometimes seems like one of the kids. Well, both men do. By the virtue of their continuity through family crises, women maintain a home that serves as a powerful attraction. The performances make these characters work. Barbara Sarafian, first seen in a long shot as she looks painfully hostile and withdrawn, is weather-beaten but attractive. Johnny must be the despair of his mother: an unkempt charmer who looks like trouble. --ROGER EBERT January 7 - 2009