“do not go gentle into that good night / rage rage against the dying of the light”

Two bruised apples barrel into each other in the Belgian romantic comedy Moscow, Belgium.

In a working class neighborhood of Ghent lives Matty, a world-weary mother of three. With a complexion as gray as Cinderella when she was still a chimney sweep, Matty’s seen better days. Her husband Werner, an art teacher at the local academy, recently moved in with his 22-year-old student, who — though never appearing on-screen — still manages to makes her presence known by way of annoying text-message chimes that trail Werner wherever he goes. A mid-life crisis, Matty crisply concedes, as she waits for her morally feeble husband to make up his mind about leaving her for good.

But Matty’s about to take up with a younger lover herself. One afternoon, in the parking lot of a grocery store, she crashes her car into a 10-ton truck the color of a smiley face. From the cab emerges a long-haired, red-bearded “Viking” with some romance issues of his own. Divorced and more than 10 years Matty’s junior, Johnny has spent most of his life shuttling between Ghent and Milan, inadvertently driving the love of his life into the arms of his antithesis, a prissy lawyer.

The claws come out in the venomous exchange that follows the collision. Who crashed into whom? Who deserves the blame? It turns quickly into a match of wits between the sexes, and Matty in particular stings with her insults. Eventually both sides calm down and go their separate ways, but something about Matty moves Johnny. He drops by her apartment the next day unannounced to fix her trunk, and asks her out on a date.

The pairing is nothing if not a contradiction. Given to overblown romantic overtures, Johnny compares Matty to Mona Lisa, only to be told that her smile is a painful grimace, and Leonardo da Vinci was gay.

Moscow, Belgium marks the debut of Flemish director Christophe van Rompaey, a homegrown talent who has been waiting a decade for the time and resources to make this feature-length film. Occasionally the dialogue twinkles with originality, though van Rompaey takes more cues from Hollywood than he needs to. Certain European flourishes — nudity in particular — serve the story’s unabashed honesty well.

For all its dreary cliches, what makes Moscow, Belgium eminently watchable is Barbara Sarafian’s Matty. In her scraggy blonde locks, Matty resembles by turns a caged lioness and a feathery princess. Sarafian climbed into her character’s skin, giving life to her ever tic and sigh.