Harriet Stroet is magisterial opposite 'toadman' Ruut Weissman

For sexual harassment, you can make excuses: 'I was young...it was a different time.' You can express regret: 'I should never have done this, I damaged young people forever.' You can also confront yourself. In public? Yes, Ruut Weismann dared, in a brilliant role-play about an investigation into scars, devised by Judith de Leeuw and beautifully poised by actress Harriët Stroet.

Weissman was artistic director of the Amsterdam School of Drama & Contemporary Music from 1986 to 2016. In 2015 wrote the Volkskrant that Weissman had three relationships with a student in his first years as boss. In the #MeToo wave came there allegations of intimidating remarks and eager hands at it. Weissman denies the latter.

Judith de Leeuw (1981) devised a documentary in which she has Weismann direct a monologue for stage in which Harriet Stroet (1966) recounts the experiences with, and consequences of, the relationship as an 18-year-old actress with a then 29-year-old drama teacher. With Ruut Weissman. The main character 9stories and NTR bring to the tube an intriguing 80-minute spectacle about the genesis of a performance is performed at DeLamar, but mostly for the sake of documentary.

Fleshy bully

It is about the run-up to the performance, which takes place mainly in Weissman's French country house. The alpha male is bound to tweak the text, because the accusations against him - director and Weissman obviously coincide - are wrong. He intimidates The Lion, once outrageously furious, swears and rants and, in between, is constantly (vr)eating on screen with his gaudy belly above knee-length trousers and meaty lower legs.

The text is 'beside the truth' and 'needs to go back to the cutting table', as Weissman 'does not recognise' the accusations, portions of which we keep seeing and especially hearing from the play Stroet performed; passages that adequately depict how the young actress fell/ fell in love under wrong power relationships and the damage that resulted for a long time to come.

Weissman in the docu: 'It wasn't a master plan, it just happened....I don't consider myself a dirty man. Those are harsh words.' But he does readily admit that, looking back, the power relations were unhealthy. He could allow himself to do that, for instance also taking students to Paris, playing the 'blithe' male there. 'I think the big mistake was that she came to learn life and I confused that with her wanting me.'

Rien au tragique

TV reviewer Artjen Fortuin judged in NRC: 'But he didn't direct this film.' And his former colleague Herien Wensink in a beautiful review in the Volkskrant: 'The viewer cannot help but conclude: Weissman is a rather impossible man...Handy p.r. is not at all.'

Not concluding otherwise? No direction? Clumsy p.r.? I'm not so sure. Weismann strikes me as too brilliant and intelligent a director to throw himself into an adventure that could break him for good. An alpha male, a big ego, it was well known. And couldn't keep his paws off young women.

In his unsympathetic attacks on Weissman, he repeatedly exclaims: 'Il faut tout prendre au sérieux, mais rien au tragique.' (Aldolphe Thiers) and also: 'We are all damaged. ' Emphatically, Weissman refers to himself as 'The Fat Jew', reminiscent of Ischa Meijer, of Jules Croiset even. Unsympathetic behaviour of tormented male children, so be it, but not without cause. A photo in the mansion shows the family of Weissman's mother: 'All gassed except my mother.' And Ruut wanted, and needed, to prove to his mother the point of her survival. Weissman, of course, with a lack of self-knowledge, tries to condone his behaviour and attitude, but does not seek sympathy, only explanation and understanding.

So he cooperates benevolently at the beginning of the docu in stating the purpose of this story, and at the end also in the confession of guilt. For both utterances, we hear The Lion putting the words in his mouth. This Christian ending came across as potent, and if it was not irony, I think it is too weak an ending to this wonderful documentary.

Which for me is carried by Harriët Stroet's masterful acting. She achieves a fine balance between accusation and understanding, is not for a moment thrown off balance by Weissman's debauched behaviour, shows her appropriate affection and respect, meanwhile gently but decidedly insulting him as an incorrigible 'toad man', and never openly takes sides with him or De Leeuw. Thanks to Stroet, Weissman drinks the cup to the bottom. And so together they deliver De Leeuw her masterpiece