With filmic echoes of Carrie in mind, you half expect Ben -- the chronically humiliated title character of the Flemish faux-documentary Ben X -- to finally dispatch his tormentors in a last act orgy of blood.
That's because, in every second or third scene, he does just that in the virtual world, sword in hand.
Taken from a real-life tragedy -- which Belgian director Nic Balthazar first showcased in a book called Nothing is All He Said -- Ben X is the tale of a reclusive teen with a version of autism called Asperger's Syndrome.
A silent victim in the classroom, Ben leads a double life in the online role-playing game ArchLord (an actual Warcraft-like game, apparently more popular in Asia than here).
In a budget-conscious stroke of genius (and let's hope it doesn't give video-game-movie hack Uwe Boll any ideas), Balthazar actually plays out Ben's fantasy world by filming and playing out the real-life game onscreen. As his online exploits increase, Ben is both intrigued and frightened by his "healer," Scarlite (Laura Verlinden), a young woman who wants to meet him and comfort him in the real world.
In the real-life case, nobody "saved" the young man whose humiliations led him to suicide. And Ben X begins as if Balthazar is hewing to events.
There are the talking heads of teachers and a single sympathetic schoolmate (the closest thing Ben has to a friend), speaking in the past tense about some traumatic event involving Ben that should have been anticipated and prevented.
Meanwhile, Ben's mother (Marijke Pinoy) recounts the long, hard road she travelled to get Ben's condition properly diagnosed in the face of indifferent doctors and "experts."
Though he's a little old to be a convincing high school student (a common casting problem worldwide, I guess), Timmermans does a terrific job in the lead. With his wide, soulful eyes, he underplays as the role requires, punctuated by spurts of manic energy. In a scene of public sexual humiliation that sets the plot rolling -- a trauma delivered by video to the 'Net -- he seems so disconnected as to be having an out-of-body experience.
Unfortunately for versimilitude, the cheesiness of filming an online video game actually detracts from the reality of that part of Ben's existence.
His "offline" horrors, however, are starkly filmed and realistic.
In particular, Titus De Voogdt and Maarten Claeyssens hit a deliciously despicable note as the bullies Bogaert and Desmet, who seem to have made it their life's work to make their troubled, vulnerable classmate lose his will to live.
To diverge from the actual events seems somehow inappropriate and disrespectful to the real-life injured parties, particularly when Balthazar comes up with a contrived "redemptive" last act that might or might not be seen as a happy ending, all things considered.
Still, he has made a vivid little film about bullying and cyber-bullying, and done a remarkable job of opening up the head of a silent witness.
Next stop: Hollywood, where Ben X is apparently being looked at as fodder for an English-language remake.
(This film is rated PG)
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