Review: Steve + Sky

A film with very little, if anything, on its mind, the completely random Steve + Sky competes with The Bridge of San Luis Rey for The Most Torturously Banal Cinematic Experience of 2005. In grainy, neon-lit Antwerp, Steve (Titus De Voogdt) runs into Sky (Delfine Bafort) once, twice, God knows how many times before they actually connect at the home of Steve’s former prison pal Jean-Claude (Johan Heldenbergh), who wants to open a club out of his home and employ Steve as his manager and Sky as a stripper. On the surface, Steve and Sky seem incompatible—he’s a short, muscley little thing with uninviting upper-lip hair and she’s a tall, Stefani-esque babe who could literally kick him to the curb—but they seem insanely attracted to each other, or so their daydreams would suggest. Wordlessly, perhaps unconsciously, they converge, smoking, having sex, occasionally bickering (over what, I don’t know), and sometimes slapping each other like little bitches. These characters are as deep as puddles of mud and their personalities about as inviting: When pissed, Sky bashes her head into the walls of Jean-Claude’s house and Steve takes to doing impromptu laps around a nearby traffic circle. The film’s editing scheme is equally perplexing and without charm—scenes are shuffled and presented out of order as to give the impression that something way beyond Steve and Sky’s banal courtship lurks beneath the story’s grimy surface. No such luck, because no amount of visual tricks or Eurotrash love songs can disguise the fact that Steve + Sky is Napoleon Dynamite without the jokes. It’s nowhere near as offensive, but it certainly would have been nice if Steve at least threw a piece of steak at Sky in order to liven things up a bit.