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!

this movie was so incredibly bad. i haven't read the book, but i assume it was probably very good, as giphart usually is a great writer... but this movie... there was not one single highlight. the storyline was badly laid out, none of the characters had any depth whatsoever. all reza was, was insanity and sex. she shows some emotion but there isn't any depth to the emotion...

there seems to be no connections between events, it's all so jaggedly put together. maybe some good acting could have balanced out the bad storyline, but unfortunately the actors were horrible as well. antonie kamerling's narration sounded like he was doing an imitation of bert (bert & ernie) from sesame street!! angela schijf had her alright moments, but overall she was just over-acting. which can be said also for beau whatever-his-last-name-is.

every so often the audience was confronted with 'symbolic' changes in the scenery ( ie lack of color after the relationship with reza is over, the dead guinea pig) that are so painfully obvious. this movie is trying to be artsy and intelligent when it simply isnt capable of being so.

they could have done something great with the story... too bad they f*ck*d it up so thoroughly!!

This movie was special to me cause it also was about personality disorder and during that time I was tested about it . It is a story about a destructive love , but also about Borderline cause Reza in this movie is a Borderliner . This story is based on a book of a Dutch writer and has the same title but the movie is a lot changed from the book . It is Angela Schijf first movie role and she really plays Reza well

The movie is about the love between Eric and Reza . They meet in a short time and fall in love . After a while their relationship changes and he founds out Reza is different then other girls . Reza is selfdestructive and hangs on to Eric like he is her only hope .

Eric is terrified by that , cause he loves her but doesn't understand her moodswings , her outbursts and her harming herself . Reza truly loves him but doesn't know how to handle it and starts claiming him more , which drives them only further apart .

This movie was good cause it was about Borderline and made the others that watched the movie more understandable to it . And it is also about a love that is going wrong because they both couldn't deal with it .

If you ever going go to watch this movie be sure to take tissues with you cause it will is surely going to make you cry.