Quite an experimental documentary/film, that actually succeeds in making its innovative medium come through. This film knows very well how to make a relatively simply tale feel very personal and relatable, knowing that this girl has lived through these circumstances. The film constantly held a thin line between the reality of this character knowing her past and the fantasy of acting out all these important events that guided her life. I felt strongly empathetic to every character, and through the pauses inbetween it made it feel more like a documentary than a partly scripted film. Both Pierre Bokma and Elsie de Brauw felt very convincing as her parents. And Jonas Smulders did a fantastic job portraying her frustrated and disconnected boyfriend. Also the small interactions with the director, Vincent Boy Kars, felt meaningful and gave the whole movie this Kauffmanesque feel of what is part of reality and what is part of the play. Leyla de Muynck 'performance' really came through on the improvised parts, but on the scripted parts she, surprisingly enough, felt a bit flat and uninterested. Which might also have to do with the surreality of facing these situations again, so I guess, from the unscripted point of view, this slightly underwhelming performance can be understood.
My only complaint would be that some scenes were a little meandering, and the scenes containing the actual conversations between Leyla and her environment would have felt more impactful to me if they were played back to back. Though I guess this film also felt like it has to have some kind of release between the emotional scenes, and how this affected Leyla in her hobbies, like poledancing.
All in all, though this film has a very creative and interesting approach towards displaying negative events affecting someones live, while trying to figure them out be reliving them. The story felt a bit drawn out at certain parts, and some scenes were a little repetitive and I have some minor issues with some of the performances, though for this kind of movie, it is hard to complain about that. The ending scene felt like a culmination of all the factors the film tried to say, that everything, though complicated, can be resolved by talking about it, which gave me quite the bittersweet mood.
