Ik ook van jou

I'm watching the film as I'm writing this review. At the same time I am also reading other user reviews. And I must say that I do agree with a lot that's said in the other reviews, but also disagree with some.

First, the story is quite shallow. I must say that I don't like stories that build on exceptional situations like borderline syndrome, because the effect of that is that there's no real explanation for (in this case) Reza's behaviour. She behaves in a strange way and the viewer needs to have some sort of an explanation for that, which the story doesn't give you. But at the same time, Angela Schijf is brilliant in the way she acts. You can see that she really tries to make the most out of this terrible script. Her acting is very convincing, which is a real achievement.

Eric's behaviour is strange in a way too. Eric only reacts with surprise and disgust. But he never tries to find out more about her and never tries to help her. He says "it's killing me too", but you don't see that in the story. Eric is more like a spectator. He writes about Reza, but we never get to know what he's written. And to make it even worse, he also is the narrator of the story and being the story-teller he has to pronounce some pathetic lines. The entire film consists of flash-backs while he's telling the story to (again) a new girlfriend, Silke. The new girlfriend, beautiful as she may be, is completely useless in the story. So also this actor, Anthony Kamerling, is handicapped with a very bad script. He also makes the best of it and acts very very well. But the audience will never feel compassion or even understanding for this character. He's just annoying.

Third, I want to mention Fraser, Eric's friend. He has to pronounce such terrible lines that it's astonishing that Beau van Erven Dorens succeeds in making them sound to convincing.

Some of the bad aspects of this film are so typically Dutch. In Dutch films dating from before (say) 2003, the sound is very bad. It sounds like the actors have their heads in a bucket. Sometimes you can hear the acoustic qualities of the room they're in, sometimes you don't. Sometimes a living room sounds like a bathroom, sometimes a bathroom sounds as acoustically dead as a garden. Sometimes the sound is harsh, sometimes flat, but mostly hard to hear or understand. About the visual quality: although the images are beautiful, the image quality is bad. Colours are flat or washed out, in dark scenes there's a lot of noise, it's never really crisp or sharp.

The most annoying thing in my opinion is the sex. There's so much nudity in this film, sex is so important in the story and both Angela Schijf and Anthony Kamerling have such beautiful bodies that you would expect the film to be (at least) a little bit sexy. But it isn't. None of the nude scenes have an erotic quality to them and with such beautiful people it must have been really hard to make it this un-sexy.

In short: brilliant acting in a terrible picture. A complete waste of talent.

From 2002 on Dutch cinema finally got better again. This movie is still part- and a schoolbook example of the bad period of Dutch cinema.

The story is needlessly told in flashback style. All of the 'present' sequences set in France are completely redundant and add nothing to the story, emotions or power. For some reason European filmmakers often find it necessary to tell the story not chronological. I never understood why, or what the appeal of it is.

The story self also isn't exactly the greatest. It isn't always clear were the movie is trying to go to and what it tries to tell. The story of a young unexperienced boy falling in love with a wild young girl, who later turns out to be quite psychotic might sound good enough on paper and even shows some parallels to Paul Verhoeven's "Turks fruit", to which this movie often was compared to before and at the time of its release. However the end result is far from comparable. The story fails to capture the right emotions, which is also due to the unimaginative performances from the actors. The way the story is told also makes the movie far from always interesting or compelling. I lost interest for this movie at about 40 minutes through the movie.

At the time this movie was made, both Antonie Kamerling and Angela Schijf were promising rising stars, with great potential and ambitions but both their careers have pretty much dried up by now. Angela Schijf seems to give her family more attention than her career (that is not a bad thing of course), while Antonie Kamerling tried to start a career in Hollywood. He never got any further than playing some small bit parts in 2 Renny Harlin flops. To be honest I'm not surprised. It's not that he is a bad actor and he certainly has got the right looks but his English just isn't good enough, to put it mildly. Just listen to him speaking English in the beginning of this movie and you'll understand what I mean. They are really not bad actors but for some reason it doesn't show in this movie. It's probably also due to the poor dialog. I still kind of liked Beau van Erven Dorens. He's been criticized a lot but his acting seems very natural. He always keeps the characters close to who he self is.

It by no means is one of the worst movies ever made but it's not exactly one I would recommend either. Bad and uninteresting storytelling makes this a bad movie.

4/10

http://bobafett1138.blogspot.com/

Wow, A very good movie!!! The movie may start a little slow but when the story about the impossible love between Reza and Eric starts you just get suck in sooo deep, you won't be able to get your eyes from the screen!!!

See it! Angela Schijf is very good! The movie about Reza's twisted character and the love Eric feels for her, the troubles that comes with it and the love he gets from it, it's amazing!

When "Ik ook van jou" was released on dvd, I ran to the videostore to rent it. Having read the book by Ronald Giphart (I've read all of his books) I really wanted to see what they had made of it.

Sadly, the fun that is present in the book is nowhere to be found in the movie. What remains is the sad story of a romance between our protagonist and his highly disturbed girlfriend.

Having said that, "Ik ook van jou" makes for an entertaining night of television, just don't expect to much. Maybe the next adaptation of a Ronald Giphart novel will do better (Phileine zegt sorry).

So I went to see the movie "Ik ook van jou". I thought it was quite nice. The story unfolds rather jerky here and there, but I think Ruud van Hemert (the director) has a great eye for pictures. Some of the camerawork and lighting is really awesome.

But what surprised me most was the use of music composed by the collective "Normally Invisible": The intro-sequence was rather shocking and unconventional, then it switches over to 'standard' John Williams type of scoring. Then it reveals more depth to the characters as the story moves along. The composers are obviously not afraid of using breakbeats, dark ambient spheres, experimental sound design and romantic 'classic' scoring.

One of the most impressive scenes was Rezas birthday party where the music really hits you as it morphs from hectic drum'n'bass/metal to transparent sounddesign ending in a rather 'esoteric' sphere... just amazing!

I can only say that these guys know what they are doing. Keep an eye out for "Normally Invisible" as they seem to perform their stuff live as well....

Oh yeah, and go see the movie! (preferrably in a theatre with good sound)