The Netherlands Film Festival is only halfway through, but let's list three notable premieres anyway. Three films that may not be big crowd pullers, but three uncompromising auteur films that bear witness to a vision that goes beyond the entertaining telling of a story. Three films that have also attracted attention abroad.
First and foremost, of course Code Blue, Urszula Antoniak's new film that has its long-awaited Dutch premiere in Utrecht tonight. A confrontational drama that hits significantly harder and is more abrasive and wrenching than Antoniak's acclaimed Nothing Personal, which won her four Golden Calfs in 2009. Code Blue is usually described as a film about a nurse on a terminal ward who is a bit too helpful to dying people. But along the way, it turns out that this unregulated euthanasia is just a sideshow. What Antoniak really does with those alienating scenes is to take you inside the mind and emotional world of someone who is out of touch with real life. Code Blue is a boldly composed expression of loneliness, one of the most terrible things that can happen to a human being. A film like a sledgehammer blow.
We find a very different kind of expressionism in 170 Hz by Joost van Ginkel - it premiered on Friday. A doomed love story, and also Van Ginkel's declaration of love to the beauty of sign language - there is hardly any spoken dialogue. And to hear from 170 Hz altogether creating a visual adventure, he explodes the intense emotions of the deaf couple in love into stunning images of surreal beauty.
By comparison, Among us by Marco van Geffen is understated and modest, but no less convincing and apt in its choice of form. The fresh architecture of a modern housing estate conceals disturbing discomfort. A shy Polish au pair gets caught in a spiral of fear and isolation when she gets dark suspicions about the true nature of one of the neighbourhood residents. A film that far exceeds the simple thriller, and is the beginning of Van Geffen's intended Vinex trilogy. Something to look forward to.
Among us had its world premiere at the Locarno festival and won two awards there. 170 Hz will soon be the only Dutch film at the important Asian festival in Busan. Code Blue had been selected for the Quinzaine des Realisateurs in Cannes.
Leo Bankersen
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