(2008; Flemish) How many reasons does one need to justify committing suicide? An avid, high-level player of the videogame Archlord, Ben Vertriest (Greg Timmermans) inhabits the virtual world of his courageous avatar Ben X, engaging online with Scarlite (Laura Verlinden) in heroic feats, to escape the real world of evil where he's vulnerable to abuse.

In particular, two high-school classmates, Bogaert and Desmet, torment the strange, quiet teenager, who excels in his studies while lacking social abilities, calling him "alien from Pluto" and "Benny Boy." Keenly observant of his environment but deficient at communication, Ben has Asperger's Syndrome, a form of autism; one doctor refers to people like Ben as "walking volcanoes" or "time bombs" ready to erupt or explode.

Inspired by actual events, director/writer Nic Balthazar's tense, dramatic film - shifting from Ben's internal narration to dramatic scenes to documentary-style interviews with Ben's parents, teachers, and schoolmates - teaches a startling lesson in deception.

At the conclusion of a classroom period after the teacher leaves the room, Ben's classmates get him to stand on a table while Bogaert and Desmet pull down his trousers; other students, most enjoying the fun, record the incident with videophones. The video ends up on the Internet.

Ben's harried mother (Marijke Pinoy), constantly reminding her son to keep calm ("Don't get worked up"), with whom he lives along with younger brother Jonas, is divorced from his father (Pol Goossen), himself nearly as inarticulate as his son.

Having previously only chatted online, Scarlite contacts Ben on his videophone, sending him her image while telling him she will come to see him as his healer ("Let me help you rise above it"); she expects him to meet her (not knowing what he looks like) at the train station the following morning.

First preventing Ben from catching his bus home from school, Bogaert and Desmet manhandle the bigger but awkward Ben, taking him to a park where they take his special watch (registering his heart rate) and videophone on which they find Scarlite's message. After an unsuccessful attempt at defending himself with a weapon he'd forged out of a crucifix, Ben's forced by the bullies to swallow with spittle a hallucinogenic pill. The drug makes Ben giddy and loquacious; he imagines Scarlite's presence in which she hugs him, telling him: "You have to learn to feel."

Enraged when his mother shows him the video on his computer of his being humiliatingly de-pantsed, as she pleads with him to tell her who was responsible, he trashes his room: "Everything can be destroyed so easily."

Leaving a brief message for his mother the next morning, Ben goes to the train station (unusual for him to make a trip by himself other than to school), fearful of the bullies finding Scarlite waiting alone for him. But when he sees her, he's unable to speak, watching her get back on the train to Brussels, even though he takes a seat beside her.

Then begins his endgame. Returning home he takes with him her virtual self as an invisible adviser, guiding him toward a plan - "Play to win" - of dying creatively.

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Copyright © 2009 Patrick Ivers. All rights reserved.
Reproduced with the permission of the copyright holder.

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