Film tip: 'The taste of water' showing again at Dutch Film Festival and still surprisingly topical

A Golden Lion for a Dutch film is very rare. Forty years ago, Orlow Seunke's The taste of water at Venice the Golden Lion for best debut. This extraordinary parable about a cynical civil servant and the girl in the closet looks like a classic. Yet the film, which greatly impressed many viewers, has not been seen for a very long time. Until now.

Coincidence or not, in 1982, also 40 years ago, the Circle of Dutch Film Journalists (KNF) was founded. The very first Prize of Dutch Film Criticism at the Dutch Film Festival went to, yes, The taste of water. Reason enough for the jubilant KNF to now The taste of water for a screening during the Netherlands Film Festival from EYE's digital archive.

Breathtaking

I am not completely unbiased, having participated in the preparation of this screening myself, but I would like to tip this as a godsend. And then you will see that what I call a timeless parable above is indeed timeless. For with the glaring failures of youth welfare in the news in abundance, it appears The taste of water still raging.

For this directorial debut, which he co-wrote with Dirk Ayelt Kooiman, Seunke was inspired by György Konrád's novel The Visitor (1976). Gerard Thoolen plays the cynical, strictly law-abiding social worker Hes. Empathising with a needy person leads to nothing, he believes. Until, by chance, he comes into contact with a girl who has been locked in a cupboard by her parents for years. Breathtakingly played by Dorijn Curvers, who, like Thoolen, was associated with the then Werkteater. Both actors were also heavily involved in the preparation of the production.

The closet girl - Hes calls her Anna - has never learned to talk and people are completely foreign to her. She tilts Hes's world. He takes care of her, although he also realises that he cannot single-handedly change the entire bureaucracy. The taste of water is intensely human, but doesn't sugarcoat anything.

Out of the straitjacket

At the Dutch premiere in 1982, I called Seunke "one of the few Dutch filmmakers who dares to step out of the straitjacket of anxiously held realism". And about the almost Kafkaesque world he creates, I wrote then: "The images exude a kind of crisis atmosphere. The officials are seated in an oppressive chaos of stairs, corridors, fences, bars and small windows. [...] Many close-ups underline that oppression. Only towards the end does space open up, especially in the short clip where official Hes crawls on the back of a truck with his protégée and shows her the sky and the sea."

I think I would still write that exactly the same way if The Taste of Water were a 2022 film.

Good to know

Good to know:

Screening (with aftertalk) during the Dutch Film Festival on Thursday 22 September, at 14:15 at Louis Hartlooper Complex 2. Here for tickets.

Several collaborators on the film, including producers Tijs Tinbergen and Jan Musch, and actress Dorijn Curvers are present at the screening. Seunke himself will not, as he currently lives and works in Indonesia.