JUST FRIENDS European Cinema

A lively and lyrical homage to jazz and friendship. Set in Antwerp, 1959, Just Friends is the story of Jack, a dockworker who unloads banana crates and dreams of playing his saxophone with the superstars of New York’s jazz scene. Too broke to realize his aspirations, he spends his time scheming to get to New York and playing gigs with his friends in rinky-dink clubs. In place of success and adulation, Jack finds passion in the arms of his boss’s alluring wife. Josse DePauw, whose playing is dubbed by jazz great Archie Shepp, gives a dazzling performance as the egomaniacal, perfectionistic, and sometimes loathsome Jack.