Luxembourg, Luxembourg

High energy comedy takes a road trip to somewhere considerably more melancholic in Ukrainian director Antonio Luckich's quirky Luxembourg, Luxembourg, which is screening in the Orizzonti section of Venice Film Festival.

His tale of twin brothers and their soon-to-be absentee father blasts out of the traps with the sort of livewire aplomb associated with the likes of Danny Boyle as we are meet Kolya and Vasya (Adrian and Daniel Suleiman) during a train escapade in their childhood. The adult Kolya introduces the pair via a fair chunk of voiceover - explaining the boy's relationship to their father, which forms the emotional crux of the film - but his ruminations are enlivened by the sprinting visuals as we watch Vasya race to the sound of Boney M's Daddy Cool to fetch their father after Kolya gets stuck on the back of the train as it picks up speed.

Runaway trains were, of course, a staple of silent cinema and this one also indicates visual humour is going to be as important to the film as script. The voice-over, meanwhile, makes it clear that, for Kolya at least, their father is a hero despite the fact that, by the time two decades have passed, they have no real idea where he is, let alone contact with him. The adult Kolya and Vasya (now played by Amil and Ramil Nasirov, who are better known in their homeland for their hip-hop group Kurgan & Agregat) may look the same but, in time-honoured fashion, their paths have diverged. Kolya still lives at home, where his mother treats him as though he was six, hating the bus driving job he does by day, while dealing drugs on the side. Vasya, meanwhile, is trying to get on in the police force, a task hampered by his brother’s reputation, while being cowed by his wife at home because of his unwillingness to do the wrong thing for extra cash.

Dad returns to drive the plot, not in person but in a phone call from the Luxembourg Consulate to say their father is gravely ill and asking if they want to say goodbye. As in all things, the brothers pull in different directions, with Kolya wanting to go and Vasya determined to stay.

Luckich will take us and them on the road in the latter part of the film but before that he shows us the lay of the land. Although Kolya is by far the more brash of the two, a bus accident that breaks both arms of the elderly Larysa Petrivna (Lyudmyla Sachenko, who the credits tell us sadly died without being able to see her lovely worked performance on the big screen) leaves him becoming a sweet helpmate. Luckich's love of silent comedy is everywhere. He extracts visual comedic mileage from everything from Larysa’s attempts to do things with two broken arms to the brother’s diminutive stature, which lead to the cruellest cut of all for Kolya when he is given bright pink women’s ice skates when out on a date. The production design from Vlad Odudenko is also noticeably good, as he creates a succession of little worlds, from the mannered comparative wealth of Vasya’s in-laws home to Kolya’s room at his mother’s and his car. While the plot is on the meandering side, Luckich’s visual energy is constantly in evidence, from Vasya’s side escapade with a bath toy monkey submarine that won’t float to Kolya’s ridiculously pimped car.

When the pair finally do go looking for closure they discover the age old truth that life is more about the journey than the origin or the final destination but Luckich ensures that we’re sufficiently invested in their adventures that his move away from comedy to final act poignancy pays off.