A good movie

I wasn’t really sure what to expect from this movie but since it has won the Golden Kalf of the best Dutch movie of the year, I was quite eager to check it out. In fact, the Dutch movie industry is so limited that there are basically only 2 kind of movies that manage to win this prize. Indeed, they are either some really commercial feature which were usually some big box-office success or they are some really obscure Art-house features that really nobody saw when they were released. Well, this movie definitely belonged to the 2^nd group, that’s for sure, but I thought it was actually pretty good. What I found most interesting about this movie is how it started presenting the father as someone wise and tough and the son as some wimp. However, this image didn’t last very long and, eventually, it became quite clear that it was actually the other way around, that the son was was the one who was really street-wise and the father was in fact a major loser. I thought it was a really interesting way to develop their relationship. Unfortunately, the makers were just relentless with the father as the guy turned out to be a massive walking disaster. Seriously, they pushed it so far that he eventually ends up killing his son in a car accident which was just too much. It is pretty obvious that they tried to emulate Michael Haneke’s and the Dardennes brothers’s style which wasn’t a bad idea. Indeed, the directing was solid and the actors gave some good performances but I wish the whole thing would have been more subtle. Anyway, to conclude, even though it was nothing really amazing,  I thought it was a decent drama and I think it is definitely worth a look, especially if you like the genre or if you are interested in Dutch movies.