With the metamovie JCVD, the Muscles from Brussels hopes to flex his acting chops, writes Joshua Rothkopf.

Jean-Claude Van Damme lives on in the fantasies of former teenage boys worldwide. He did the big scissor kick in 1988’s Bloodsport, his first major role. Cult stardom followed. He played twins in Double Impact. He starred in John Woo’s first Hollywood movie, Hard Target, an importation the kickboxer can take most of the credit for. Then, just as suddenly, the day of the action hero was done – not just for Van Damme, but Arnold, too. His movies slid into parody. There were drug problems, divorces. Van Damme was caught on tape in a European TV interview acting stoned and repeating the word ‘aware’. His fans cringed.

All of this is now behind him. Or rather, in front of us: In a move that feels especially savvy in today’s reflexive mediascape, Van Damme plays Van Damme in JCVD, a French action-comedy that shares some of the same fizzy geekiness of 2007’s Hot Fuzz. It stars the actual Belgian celeb caught up in a random bank robbery, while SWAT teams take up positions in a video store across the street. Swarms of fans gather like in Dog Day Afternoon. Amid the madness, Van Damme grows reflective and talks about his mistakes. At length.

“Who knows me, really?” Van Damme wonders aloud. “Who knows the guy who adopted seven dogs on the street on a whim?” He’s speaking to us from an editing suite in Thailand, and we just have to let him ramble, in a rush of heavily accented English. “I never took a private jet in my life. JCVD is me. This is Van Damme; this is the guy. If I’m going to die and people only know me as the stone face, I’ve got the right to finally say it. I’m 48 years old when I brush my teeth in the morning. Van Damme is real. I don’t like to lie anymore.”

Van Damme is unafraid to refer to himself in the third person. He knows he’s a brand name – “like Levi’s, like Wrangler,” he says, a bit out of date. (“JCVD: It goes faster, right? Faster than Jean-Claude Van Damme? Like DKNY.” We haven’t got the heart to argue syllables with him.) But the star’s self-seriousness is strangely endearing, as is his maturation into onscreen vulnerability. “Telling the truth is good for acting,” he offers. “JCVD taught me not to disappoint the audience with dishonesty. They have to love the story, too.”

That story, extensively overhauled from an original idea titled The King of Belgium, is by French visual stylist Mabrouk El Mechri, an avowed Van Damme fan since his youth in the banlieue. Actually, fan might be putting it mildly: “I was obsessed for like a year, when I was 15. I had a huge poster of him in my room; he was my childhood hero,” El Mechri says from his home in Paris. “He was physically big like Stallone, but supple like Bruce Lee, and he was European, which was a big deal for us. He gave us hope that you could make it in America.”

And yet, JCVD, with its courtroom-custody scenes, schmoozing agents and one long Van Damme–to-camera confession, is no mere puff piece, nor is El Mechri blinded by former enthusiasms. “My parents brought me up right,” the director insists with a laugh. “I’m not starstruck. If I’m involved in a film, it’s going to be mine, and I’m going to be as respectful and honest as I can.”

Van Damme believes he was never treated so fairly on set. “Mabrouk knew how to talk to me,” he says. “He gave me lots of confidence: ‘Look, we’re all here for you. If you make a mistake, I’m giving you the time to fix it. I know they told you otherwise in those low-budget studios in Bulgaria. Not here.’ There was so much love that I opened my heart.”

And now Jean-Claude Van Damme seems ready to do it again. He’s currently cutting a film that he wrote and directed, called Full Love (aka The Eagle Path). It involves flashbacks, Bronx sidekicks and a hero named Frenchy. (Guess who?) He talks reverently about directors like Martin Scorsese, not so much John Woo (“a wonderful man, but all those slow-motion pigeons are not my style”). And he needs to act. “I made some good movies and I made some shitty movies,” Van Damme says. “Now I just want to make myself happy.”

JCVD (3 stars) screens on Apr 1 and 11 as part of the HKIFF. See www.hkiff.org.hk for details.

Read our other features:
Leader of the pack: Daniel Wu
Time regained: Wong Kar Wai
Presidential assassination: Oliver Stone
Van Dammage: JCVD

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