Hemel

After a slow start that seems to offer superficial gratuitous sex the film deepens and deepens through the courageous and mesmeric performance by Hannah Hoekstra. The cinematography, naturalistic camerawork, pithily Dutch dialogue, uncontrived performances and minimalist sound track manifest Sacha Polak's unpretentious direction. Hans Dagelet seems to fit like a glove into his role as the wearily urbane father.

I think this might be the first review I've written for IMDb and it's only because I've never seen so many people get it so wrong.

I watched this movie with very low expectations because it's rating was so bad. I just wanted to see some smut to be quite frank.

What I received were sexual vignettes that helped me understand the character of our protagonist.

Her behavior and reaction to others showed me what she thought of sex, power and love. And how they played with each.

In her eyes she thought her indifference to sex and other people in general communicated strength while I viewed it as cowardice.

The lover who seemed to truly disgust her, was the man who had the most respected for himself and for her as well.

I've watched millionaires buy crap art because they didn't understand it, yet wanted to fit in. I've also seen intellectuals dismiss smart movies because they were confronted with language they didn't like or topics they were uncomfortable with getting hung up on that and missing the point.

This movie is over a decade old which is like 30 years old for other times and to me it illustrates female sexuality of the bourgeois, spoiled ,unloved empty yearning for something. But know wouldn't know What it was or what to do if they got it. Because we've lost our way.

"Hemel" is a remarkable film--like Greenaway's best for example, what you find disquieting at first--here the raunchy soft porn realism of Hemel's love/sex life--slowly becomes fascinating when you realize that she is actually suffering a great deal. And Hemel, the emotionally stunted tart in this 2012 Dutch release directed by Sascha Polak is certainly promiscuous. Like Peter Pan, the boy who wouldn't grow up, Hemel is happy leading the life of a wayward adolescent. She sleeps with just about anything that comes her way, including one unsavory character who chokes and rapes her and a thin blond Dutchman who makes her shave her private parts before having intercourse. Hemel's cold dad Gijs is at the root of much of her trauma and this film is also a smart psychological study. Hannah Hoekstra as Hemel tows a fine line between sexy and skanky-she bears an uncanny resemblance to Nicole Kidman, both in her fine, uh, features and superb acting ability.

Here is a psychological quality movie with razor sharp and often funny quotes, although there is not a huge amount of conversations in it. The storyline starts with daughter 'Hemel' who devours men. How do you detach from your parents. It is a movie that slowly crawls under your skin and makes you feel. And feel the pain. The movie contains strong intense screen shots and subtle supporting sounds/music combined with a layered story that is blended in a way of rare beauty. What starts as an apparent superficial movie (a dutch and very explicit, but not too shocking start), slowly unravels in questions of how do you detach from your parents, which tecniques do you use to be loved, do you hurt or get hurt, life and death, do you get enough attention and do you "miss the bus". The sex is more or less something that you have to look through to see what the movie really is about. Telling the story would spoil a lot of it, so my advice would be go and feel that movie.

I came away feeling that the father did not prepare Hemel for life without him. It's not a skin flick but simply a warning NOT to raise a daughter as this one did. She deserved better.