La fiancée polonaise

I've seen this movie on an open-air festival in Deurne.

It was raining a bit but none of the visitors stood up and walked away. The characters in this movie seem so real. There's such a big tension in this movie. Tension between the Anna and her pimp. Tension between the farmer and Anna. The two characters seem to have a struggle within themselves, which makes what happens in the end inevitable.

The developement of the relation between Anna and Henk is unusual, that's also the reason why the movie is interesting and -in a special way- exciting. Especially the non-dialogues between them, with different reasons for each person. Henk is introvert and doesn't speak Polish, Anna simply doesn't speak Dutch. But from the beginning of the movie I sensed some kind of love and care from Henk to Anna, and vice-versa. It's touchy to see their 'love & tenderness' growing. Very 'romantic', for those who want to see it!

In "The Polish bride" a Polish woman (Monic Hendrickx), victim of women trafficking, finds refuge by a single farmer in the Dutch province of Groningen.

Their relationship is characterized above all by silence. The Polish woman has only a flawed knowledge of the Dutch language, and the farmer is not a heavy talker.

Partly caused by this lack of communication the relationship is arduous at first. The farmer appreciates the order that the woman creates in his household, but finds it difficult to get accustomed to the fact that no longer everything goes according to his rules. Especially when the woman insists on altering his table manners, tension arises. On the other hand the woman finds it hard to understand that a man is nice without expecting sexual favors in return.

Nevertheless as time goes by the two slowly grow together, resulting in a spectacular finale when the pimp of the woman reappears.

"The Polish bride" is an ode to the Dutch province of Groningen, with beautiful shots of the (flat) landscape and the music of the Groninger minstrel Ede Staal (1941 - 1986).

Remarkable is the fact that this ode to a Dutch province in the North of the country is made by an Algerian director who came th the Netherlands when he was 30, graduates from the film academy when he was in his 40s and made this film while being in his 50's.

I love this movie, but for slightly different reasons than mentioned here. I'm from the Netherlands, and I grew up in a village in the eastern part of Friesland, which is very similar to the countryside of Groningen.

Halfway during the movie I noticed there were tears in my eyes. Oddly enough, it wasn't during an emotional scene between the main characters. It was a shot of the countryside of Groningen. The scenery wasn't extraordinarily beautiful or anything. Yet somehow, it had managed to perfectly capture the feeling the Dutch countryside gives me whenever I'm visiting my parents.

And then I realized it wasn't just the scenery, it also was the slow pace of the movie, the lack of dialogue between the two main characters, or the lack of much happening at all during most of the movie. The solitude of the farmer's life, the gentle moments between the main characters, the two of them being all alone in their own little world.

That one of the characters was a Polish woman on the run from pimps is just a McGuffin, this movie really isn't about that. It's about the feeling of living on the north-eastern Dutch countryside. If cinematography feels a little odd now and then, it's because it's completely focused on capturing the feeling of being on a Dutch farm, the story and it's characters being less important.

People are remembered. Exciting events are remembered. What movie is about remembering the feeling of living at a certain place at a certain time? OK, and what if we're not talking about someone's memories of growing up? Yeah, those kind of movies are rare, aren't they? This movie is one of them, and one of the best.

When people are going to watch this movie in a couple of decades, if they're still capable of investing themselves into a slow paced, technically inferior movie with an unexciting storyline compared to whatever they'll be used to by then, they're going to experience what it's like to live the the sobering, lonely yet somehow also magical and sometimes beautiful life of a Dutch farmer and his Polish bride.

A lonely farmer falls in love with a woman who literally falls into his life. I knew what was going to happen, as would anyone who's ever been to the movies before, but I was riveted by the journey to the inevitable conclusion, and that's what made this film so enjoyable. Only one element mars the believability of this love story, and you'll know it when you see it.