Synopsis

Musique Chapelle is the story of Jennifer Rosieres, a twenty-three-year-old piano virtuoso. Jennifer has lived her life with a terrible secret. When she gets the chance to compete in the finals of the world-famous Queen Elizabeth Competition, a painful childhood experience comes flooding back to her memory.

Program Note

​ To compete in the Queen Elizabeth Competition, one of the most prestigious classical music competitions, twenty-three-year-old talented pianist Jennifer returns to Belgium, the country she left as a child. However, for Jennifer, this homecoming is not a journey of nostalgia and excitement, but a terrifying encounter with memories of a dark past that have haunted her subconscious. After living in the United States since Everybody's Famous!, director Dominique Deruddere returned to his native Belgium more than 15 years later to explore his protagonist's story. In his homeland, the final of the Queen Elizabeth Competition, the chosen subject of the film, has a very unique set of rules. A week before the final, the twelve finalists, completely cut off from the outside world and without cell phones, must live together in a chapel-turned-mansion to practice their final song. Isolated competitors with limited space and time constraints, they face the pressure of their own futures and strive to outperform each other. With subtle echoes of Agatha Christie's novels, there is no doubt that this compelling subject provides cinematic inspiration. Deruddere weaves an intricate puzzle of parental devotion, desire, and conflict over their young daughter's talent, intertwining the tragic events of the past with the emotional turmoil of Jennifer's present-day life under the pressure of the competition.Taeke Nicolaï delivers an outstanding performance as Jennifer, leaving you wondering if she's actually playing the piano. Dominique Deruddere's direction and mise- en-scène turn moments of potentially static piano playing into emotional dynamism, making the movie a pleasure to watch. (Jin. Cho)

Director

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  • Dominique Deruddere
  • Belgian writer/director Dominique Deruddere studied film at Sint Lukas in Brussels. His thesis film *Killing Joke* went on to win an award at the Brussels International Film Festival. Deruddere's fifth feature *Everybody's Famous!* received many awards and nominations, including an Academy Award nomination for best foreign language film. He continued to work in both the United States and Belgium and has since directed five more feature films. *The Chapel* is his most recent production and his tenth film.