Zomerhitte Reviews

At first, there was a pretty good buzz about this flick. Indeed, it was another steamy thriller adapted from a book by Jan Wolkers, a famous Dutch writer, and it was Monique van de Ven's directing debut. The interesting thing is that, 40 years earlier, van de Ven made her acting debut also in an adaptation of a book written by Wolkers, 'Turks Fruit', and it turned out to be a huge success and one of the best Dutch movies ever made. So, the expectations were pretty high but, surprisingly, it turned out to be a flop and the movie was literally destroyed by the critics and indeed, I thought myself that the whole thing was pretty disappointing. Let's start with Waldemar Torenstra, the actor playing the main character. Torenstra has been really popular lately and showed up in many high profile Dutch productions released recently but I always had a hard time to care about the guy. I mean, he is a good looking fellow, that's pretty obvious, but he always seems to be too nice, showing the charisma of a Teddy Bear. It was even more obvious in a movie like this which would require a rather dark and tormented guy like, for example, Michael Douglas in 'Basic Instinct'. Concerning Sophie Hilbrand, a famous Dutch TV host, who was making her acting debut, she was better but even though she displayed a wild side, she was still not really convincing in a seemingly femme fatale role. Finally, the directing was just plain weak and it didn't feel much excitement during the whole thing, in fact, it must have been one of the most soporific thrillers I have seen lately. To conclude, the whole thing was a failure and it is not really worth a look, even if you are interested in Dutch movies.