Dirty God Reviews

I wasn’t really sure what to expect from this flick but since it had won the Gouden Kalf for the Best Dutch movie of the year, I was quite eager to check it out. Well, it was the first movie I saw dealing with an acid attack victim so, only therefore, it got some few extra points from me. I also believe that I did attend the NFTA (Dutch Film Academy) around the same time as Sacha Polak did but, back then, I didn’t work with her. Anyway, she delivered here a gritty drama with a strong performance by newcomer Vicky Knight. Indeed, her performance was so convincing and genuine that you might wonder if she really went through such a terrible experience and, in fact, she did. Indeed, when she was a kid, she survived a fire so most of her scars were actually real. I also did appreciate the fact that they didn’t develop too much her life before her attack but you can imagine that it wasn’t already so amazing. Unfortunately, they struggled to properly develop her relationship with the other characters. For example, they spent a good chunk of the running time with a really generic and half-baked love triangle involving the main character, her best friend and her best friend’s boyfriend. To fix this, I would have actually dropped the best friend and focus on this boy who was still falling in love with her in spite of what happened to her. It would have been really unexpected and interesting to behold but, instead, you never get to understand what it is going on with this guy. There was also another half-baked relationship with a colleague which could have been easily removed. Then, the rest of the movie focused on the fact that she wasn’t fit to be a mother but this argument was hardly concinving. Anyway, to conclude, in spite of its flaws, it was still a decent drama though and it is definitely worth a look.