A good movie

I wasn’t really sure what to expect from this flick but since it did win the Golden Calf for the Best Dutch movie of the year, I was quite eager to check it out. Well, even if it definitely had some potential, to be honest, I thought the damned thing was rather disappointing after all. First of all, even though I’m half-Dutch and spent the last 20 years living in the Netherlands, I’m rather oblivious about Curaçao which is a remote island in the Caribbean and yet it is still a member of the Netherlands. Still, since it was the first movie I saw taking place in this island, the possibility were pretty much endless and, yet, the end-result felt flat, empty and even rather pretentious. Seriously, even if it barely reached 80 mins, it still felt like it was lasting forever which is never a good sign. Eventually, you do get to see the main character going to school but it was dropped fairly quickly, you never get to see her father going to the police station or interact with his colleagues or doing any actual police work. Same thing with her grandfather who seemed to have more imaginary friends than actual human interactions. Eventually, it almost felt like a deserted island with only 3 people left which was probably not the intended effect. At least, it was visually pretty neat, there is no doubt that Curaçao is a beautiful and intriguing island and the makers definitely managed to make it not look like some pretty postcard. On top of that, all the 3 main actors delivered some really solid performance and I was above all impressed by Everon Jackson Hooi who has been famous in the Netherlands for almost 2 decades as a soap actor. Anyway, to conclude, I still gave this movie some extra points since it did try to tackle something completely new to me and I think it is worth a look, in spite of its flaws.