Brotherly bonds get quite the test in The Ardennes, a surprisingly tense and entertaining spin on a familiar tale from first-time director Robin Pront. Opening with a robbery gone wrong, Dave (Jeroen Perceval, who also co-wrote the film with Pront) leaves his brother Kenneth (Kevin Janssens) behind, taking off with Kenneth’s girlfriend Sylvie (Veerle Baetens). Kenneth refuses to rat on his brother and girlfriend, so he gets the maximum punishment. Cut to four years later, and Dave picks up Kenneth from prison after he serves his term. Kenneth is excited to get back into the swing of things, but Dave has been withholding two bombshells from him: Dave and Sylvie became a couple while Kenneth was in prison, and now they’re expecting a child. And since Kenneth is a huge mass of masculine fury with a short fuse, they’re concerned about how he’ll take the news.

The question of whether or not Kenneth will find out about his brother and Sylvie is the sort of old, clichéd material that feels worn out by now, and when Pront & Perceval’s script leans on this The Ardennes can start feeling awfully generic. But the screenplay makes up for its narrative shortcomings by having a strong and rich thematic core, with Dave and Sylvie trying to climb their way out from below the poverty line to live a standard life (“I just want to be dull,” Sylvie says at one point). Kenneth’s release from prison puts a wrench into their plans, and his menacing presence in their lives serves as a reminder of their selfish decision four years earlier, threatening to drag them back down to the place they’ve tried so hard to escape from.

Pront and director of photography Robrecht Heyvaert give the film a slick, grimy look that heightens the dramatic stakes, highlighting the poor living conditions and little opportunities for escape. Perceval and Janssens work great together as the two battling brothers, but Baetens—who people might recognize from her excellent turn in The Broken Circle Breakdown—is fantastic as Sylvie. An unexpected turn in the film’s final act that moves things to rural Belgium brings a touch of the eccentric and surreal that might prove divisive, but it all leads to a highly intense and brutal climax that’ll make sure people won’t forget about The Ardennes after they see it. The finale’s nihilism might turn some viewers off, but it sure as hell leaves a mark, and that counts for something.

A major success in its home country of Belgium (and the country’s submission for Best Foreign Film at the Oscars), The Broken Circle Breakdown is prime material for audiences craving more sombre and dramatic content during this fall’s awards season. Relying on elliptical editing that packs a big emotional punch, along with several affective musical interludes, it’s understandable why the film has been a success in Belgium and Europe (it recently picked up more nominations than any other film at the European Film Awards). But The Broken Circle Breakdown‘s popularity isn’t too surprising considering how much it panders to viewers. It’s an ineffective and blatantly manipulative melodrama, lazily relying on its playfulness with time in order to get the emotional response it wants. It’s hard to feel anything genuine when the filmmakers are too busy trying to squeeze every last tear out of its audience.

The film’s centre is Didier (Johan Heldenbergh) and Elise (Veerle Baetens), a couple who tour as folk/bluegrass musicians with their friends. The story starts with news that their young daughter Maybelle has leukemia and must go under chemotherapy. Shortly after this the film cuts back several years earlier to Didier and Elise’s first night together. This is the first of many manipulative choices director Felix Van Groeningen and editor Nico Leunen make, contrasting the couple’s lowest points with scenes of happier times in the past. It’s essentially Blue Valentine, but with all the emotional impact sucked out and replaced with a dying child. Groeningen doesn’t spend much time developing the family’s situation. He lets the sight of a five year old throwing up and losing her hair do the heavy lifting for him, relying on sad images rather than making anything on screen feel honest. Maybelle doesn’t seem like a young girl fighting for her life through a terrible situation. She’s just a plot mechanic for Didier and Elise. The transparency makes it impossible for the film to recover from this initial failure.

Groeningen also makes some poor choices when it comes to developing characters. When Didier first meets Elise at the tattoo parlor she works at, he explains his love for bluegrass music and America. It doesn’t come as a big surprise when Didier, a proud atheist and believer in science, starts to become disillusioned with the US while his daughter suffers. In a flashback where Maybelle takes her first steps, the camera changes its focus to a TV playing news coverage of 9/11. The groan-worthy quality of that scene is soon overshadowed when, after George W. Bush vetoes a bill funding stem cell research, Didier unleashes a tirade at one of his concerts ranting about pro-lifers and right-wingers. Once again, nothing in this scene feels genuine. Didier doesn’t come across as an anguished father venting out his frustrations. He simply feels like a mouthpiece for the writer’s opinions (Actually, Heldenbergh is a co-writer of the play this film is based on. I haven’t seen the play myself, so I don’t know if this scene was lifted from the source material or not, but regardless it doesn’t work here).

The musical interludes, where Didier and Elise perform on tour, are the true highlights in the film. Heldenbergh and Baetens, who sing and play themselves, are great to listen to, and do an excellent job making these performances feel like the only time they can take comfort from everything else in their lives. The best moment, where Elise’s cover of “The Wayfaring Stranger” is coupled with devastating news about Maybelle, is the one time the film succeeds at what it’s aiming for. As for everything else, The Broken Circle Breakdown is a well-made but ultimately ineffective film.

Watch the trailer for The Broken Circle Breakdown