Sometimes it's harder to watch a movie that had a lot of potential that didn't materialize, than just watch a bad movie.
I am a sucker for melancholic movies about student life, the first uneasy steps into adulthood, and this movie is set in Amsterdam so it reminds me even more of my own student days, and the title alone could bring me to tears: the loneliness of those years is my most beautiful memory as well as the saddest.
The story has some good starting points: three young students befriend each other, and make their way in the small world of fraternity, and all three have a difficult relationship with their fathers. In the meantime they navigate their sexual experiments and have to deal with the consequences. The main character has to learn some lessons, about life and the value of friendship, so he can stop getting it wrong. Unfortunately the script is uneven, ridden with clichés, and the dialogues are either too improvised or too old fashioned. The fathers are cardboard figures, the reasons for the sons' grievances sound contrived and the mothers are an afterthought. A gay guy from a conservative background with an unaccepting father is a valid story, but already told so often that it needed a new twist; his suicide is just another box to be ticked, and seems necessary only so the hero can feel the guilt of not having been a better friend. And why the hero has a bad relationship with his father is never explained.
The acting is unremarkable in most scenes, but as soon as any real emotion is required, the three actors fall into first year drama school improv. The lines don't help, either too explicit or too textbook, and sometimes you feel just how happy they must have been when the scene was over. The gay guy is the only one with some depth, but relies to much on his resigned frown in half of his scenes.
The director has used light symbolism in a lot of his work, but here he overplays. During the movie actors pose as their characters as for imagined photos, a formal break that serves no real purpose. Rain, sun and leaves of trees are used elaborately to underline emotions, and in each scene there is at least one object, move or framing that tries to convey something more. Mise-en-scene is used to beautify the movie, but gets in the way of the story.
And then there are the standards of Dutch movies since the seventies: unnatural swearing ('Godverdomme, klootzak!') and gratuitous sex scenes. Both can easily be avoided, so why put them in?
All in all, the makers were the ones getting it wrong. The movie could have done with a much better script, more rehearsals, better casting of some roles and a director with a steadier hand who dared to ditch 'ideas'. It left me with the thought of the movie that could have been, and returned me to my own memories, of when was a young student and the city seemed deserted.
I am a sucker for melancholic movies about student life, the first uneasy steps into adulthood, and this movie is set in Amsterdam so it reminds me even more of my own student days, and the title alone could bring me to tears: the loneliness of those years is my most beautiful memory as well as the saddest.
The story has some good starting points: three young students befriend each other, and make their way in the small world of fraternity, and all three have a difficult relationship with their fathers. In the meantime they navigate their sexual experiments and have to deal with the consequences. The main character has to learn some lessons, about life and the value of friendship, so he can stop getting it wrong. Unfortunately the script is uneven, ridden with clichés, and the dialogues are either too improvised or too old fashioned. The fathers are cardboard figures, the reasons for the sons' grievances sound contrived and the mothers are an afterthought. A gay guy from a conservative background with an unaccepting father is a valid story, but already told so often that it needed a new twist; his suicide is just another box to be ticked, and seems necessary only so the hero can feel the guilt of not having been a better friend. And why the hero has a bad relationship with his father is never explained.
The acting is unremarkable in most scenes, but as soon as any real emotion is required, the three actors fall into first year drama school improv. The lines don't help, either too explicit or too textbook, and sometimes you feel just how happy they must have been when the scene was over. The gay guy is the only one with some depth, but relies to much on his resigned frown in half of his scenes.
The director has used light symbolism in a lot of his work, but here he overplays. During the movie actors pose as their characters as for imagined photos, a formal break that serves no real purpose. Rain, sun and leaves of trees are used elaborately to underline emotions, and in each scene there is at least one object, move or framing that tries to convey something more. Mise-en-scene is used to beautify the movie, but gets in the way of the story.
And then there are the standards of Dutch movies since the seventies: unnatural swearing ('Godverdomme, klootzak!') and gratuitous sex scenes. Both can easily be avoided, so why put them in?
All in all, the makers were the ones getting it wrong. The movie could have done with a much better script, more rehearsals, better casting of some roles and a director with a steadier hand who dared to ditch 'ideas'. It left me with the thought of the movie that could have been, and returned me to my own memories, of when was a young student and the city seemed deserted.
