Jo and Frank are very different brothers. Jo is single, a music enthusiast, and has just opened his own club, the Belgica. Frank is older, a family man with an ordered daily life. When he discovers the atmosphere that grabs the Belgica every night, Frank sees the opportunity to escape his daily grind: he offers to help Jo enlarge the bar and make it successful. Spurred on by this duo, in a few weeks the Belgica becomes a real phenomenon...

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For many moviegoers, Belgian filmmaker Felix Van Groeningen is the greatest thing to come out in recent years, thanks to The Misfortunates and The Broken Circle Breakdown, the phenomenon of 2012. Belgica has lots of expectations to meet, and audiences will quickly find the same ingredients as those in his other movies: a marginal hero, a dysfunctional family, alcohol and music, drama laced with comedy, and the same impulse to film the ordinary bodies and beautiful souls of regular people. Unsurprisingly, the strength of Belgica comes from its voracious energy, its appetite for the rhythms, and the sometimes stunning fury of its mise en scene, not to mention the impeccable performances of Stef Aerts and Tom Vermeir. But because all this revolves around a very simple, formulaic story, Van Groeningen never really manages to add depth to his movie, perhaps not realizing he cannot rely solely on fireworks.