Destination: Bruges, Belgium

Movie: In Bruges

Tagline in IMDB: “Shoot First, Sightsee Later”

Right away, I can see that this is not the movie plot for me. How dare they put anything ahead of sightseeing? But, ahhh, the location.

I am so in love with place, that I am one of those dorky people still sitting in the theater as the final credits roll.  I don’t care who the Casting Director or the Best Boy were (or even what a Best Boy does), I just want to see where the film was made.

Sometimes that leads to disappointment. Like when a middle western family drama turns out to be filmed in Canada.  Or Reds, the Warren Beatty film set so realistically in Moscow, turns out to have been filmed in Helsinki. But In Bruges really is in Bruges.  Even though one of the main characters doesn’t know where Bruges is, we know that it is in Belgium, don’t we?  Even if we don’t know much about it.

For instance, I had no idea until I saw this movie how beautiful this medieval city really is. (Even though, according to their official tourism site, many of the medieval buildings have been rebuilt.) The movie’s hit-men wile away their time on Bruges Market Square with beer, bullets, broads  and a limited vocabulary, drift down the canal in a boat, climb the Belfry Tower, walk cobblestone streets beside a canal with medieval houses reflected in its waters, visit the Chapel of the Holy Blood, climb over the arching bridges that span the canal and hang out at the Kronenberg Astrid Park.

Okay, I want to go there. (And a few years later we DID.)

What movie has sent you home to pack your bags? Are there movies that were so bad you would have walked out except that the scenery was so good? (In case you are wondering, I am thinking here of Summer Love, set on Santorini.)