I had seen the trailer of this movie a couple of months back, and had liked the images. Later I knew that Tamar van den Dop is one of the actresses in the movie. Thus I decided to see this Dutch movie. I had seen one Dutch movie earlier ? Blind directed by Tamar van den Dop and had loved it. So I had high expectations
from this movie.The story is about a family. Four generations. The great grand father Konraad (Piet Kamerman) after his wife?s death; writes a letter to his daughter Maria asking them to come and be with him during the last days. Maria?s family and life is in a mess. Maria is stressed with getting old and her relationship with her husband. Their daughter Sabine (Tamar van den Dop) is cheating on her husband, who is in love with Sabine?s psychologically depressed sister. The daughters of Sabine are young and the elder one is neurotic reactionary violent behavior whenever she faces her parent?s breaking relationship. But eventually for the sake of Konraad everyone goes to their country house. The movie ends with the death of Konraad.The movie is typically slow. It is arty stuff; rightly suited for critics and intellectual awards. Director Ms.Nanouk Leopold has developed her own style of film making. Stand still images, use of only part of the screen space with actual subjects, minimal dialogues, over emphasized capture of body and face to tell a story on its own and intimate moments (merging towards feminine and masculine sexualities). All the actors have acted well. The images are beautifully captured. The story is thin, so moves slowly and dwells more in show-casing individual personalities and traumatic events surrounding them. There is some music ? only at places where required. One observation, there were a few patches in the movie were the film was different, or developing was different, or camera used was different. It stood out as sour thumb on the flow. Did I like the movie? I would not say whole heartedly ? YES. I know there are critics who have acclaimed it and I have read that it won an award too. When I compare this with Blind, this movie falls too / two notches short.It surely has the hallmark stamp of Nanouk on the movie, who I think, has marketed her good self well enough for some producers to fund her ? even though with marginal budgets. I just hope there are producers to fund Tamar van den Dop. She is very sensitive as a director. I am longing to see her next directorial movie.(Stars 6 out of 10)
September 15, 2007
