De Poolse bruid (1998)

User Rating:

7.3/10   

Director:

Karim Traïdia

Writer:

Kees van der Hulst (writer)

Release Date:

26 March 1998 (Netherlands)

Genre:

Drama | Romance

Plot:

Polish deceived woman hides from pimps on a Dutch farm, and shares an intriguing romance with the farmer.

Plot Keywords:

Farm | Farmhouse | Rape | Rural | Flashback Sequence

Awards:

Nominated for Golden Globe. Another 6 wins & 4 nominations

Cast

Jaap Spijkers	...	Henk Woldring
Monic Hendrickx	...	Anna Krzyzanowska
Rudi Falkenhagen	...	Pimp
Roef Ragas	...	Son
Hakim Traidia	...	Mailman
Soraya Traïdia	...	Krysztyna

Also Known As:

The Polish Bride (International: English title)

Runtime:

89 min

Country:

Netherlands

Language:

Dutch | German | Polish

Colour:

Colour

Aspect Ratio:

1.85 : 1

Sound Mix:

Dolby Digital

Certification:

Argentina:13 | Australia:MA | Chile:14 | Finland:K-14 | France:U | Hong Kong:III | Netherlands:12 | Singapore:R(A) | Sweden:15 | UK:15

Filming Locations:

Groningen, Groningen, Netherlands

Company:

Ijswater Film & Television

Goofs:

Continuity: The main character drives a Volvo 240 sedan. When the go to the city, the car changes into a wagon.

Movie Connections:

Featured in "Zomergasten: (#12.4)" (1999)

Soundtrack:

Stabat Mater, Op. 53 (for Solo Voices, Mixed Choir and Orchestra)

A beautiful time capsule

I love this movie, but for slightly different reasons than mentioned here. I'm from the Netherlands, and I grew up in a village in the eastern part of Friesland, which is very similar to the countryside of Groningen.

Halfway during the movie I noticed there were tears in my eyes. Oddly enough, it wasn't during an emotional scene between the main characters. It was a shot of the countryside of Groningen. The scenery wasn't extraordinarily beautiful or anything. Yet somehow, it had managed to perfectly capture the feeling the Dutch countryside gives me whenever I'm visiting my parents.

And then I realized it wasn't just the scenery, it also was the slow pace of the movie, the lack of dialogue between the two main characters, or the lack of much happening at all during most of the movie. The solitude of the farmer's life, the gentle moments between the main characters, the two of them being all alone in their own little world.

That one of the characters was a Polish woman on the run from pimps is just a McGuffin, this movie really isn't about that. It's about the feeling of living on the north-eastern Dutch countryside. If cinematography feels a little odd now and then, it's because it's completely focused on capturing the feeling of being on a Dutch farm, the story and it's characters being less important.

People are remembered. Exciting events are remembered. What movie is about remembering the feeling of living at a certain place at a certain time? OK, and what if we're not talking about someone's memories of growing up? Yeah, those kind of movies are rare, aren't they? This movie is one of them, and one of the best.

When people are going to watch this movie in a couple of decades, if they're still capable of investing themselves into a slow paced, technically inferior movie with an unexciting storyline compared to whatever they'll be used to by then, they're going to experience what it's like to live the the sobering, lonely yet somehow also magical and sometimes beautiful life of a Dutch farmer and his Polish bride.