La peau de Bax

Alex Van Warmerdam is a director with a very distinguishable cinematographic style. In most of his films, everything is just a little bit out of the ordinary, but it's hard to say why exactly. 'Schneider vs Bax' is no exception.

Nevertheless, I think this film is not as good as most of his other movies. This is a crime thriller about contract killers, and in such a film even Van Warmerdam needs a script that's tight and logical. Unfortunately, it is neither. There are strange, inexplicable events, the story swerves in all directions, and there is not really a lot of suspense.

You could argue that Van Warmerdam's unique, slightly bizarre style of film making compensates for these flaws. For some this might be the case, for me it wasn't. The unique Van Warmerdam chemistry of some of his other films didn't work as well in this one.

Still, there is much to enjoy. The phlegmatic way the killers behave, as if what they do is just as ordinary as baking a cake or driving a truck, is a nice feature. There is also the Dutch landscape of treeless lakes and flat marshes, with one wooden house in which much of the action takes place.

But overall, I think this film could have been a lot better with a script in which every action is functional and every person behaves logical. The acting was also a bit uneven. I liked Tom Dewispelaere as Schneider, but Van Warmerdam himself as Bax was less convincing. Maria Kraakman played a nice part as Bax's depressive daughter who seems to be a damsel in distress, but at the end enjoys pulling the trigger as much as the contract killers.

This could be a Van Warmerdam for beginners. It has the typical Van Warmerdam weird style, but the story still kind of makes sense. After his quite dark (but great) movie Borgman, this one is a bit more lighthearted.

Two quite capable killers / fathers are commissioned to take each other out for unclear reasons. There are whoever many people walking in the way and they would like to get the job done without to much collateral damage. In a way many of the characters in this film are more like 'real people' than in the average film. Many, but not all, its still a Van Warmerdam..

I really liked it.

A scene nearing the third act - no spoilers - revolves around a character (played by the writer and director) insisting there are crackers in the cabinet only to realize in fact there are no crackers in the cabinet. That pretty much sums up the movie for me. It is incredibly slow and predictable after the first build-up and plays out very systematically until the end. I was a huge fan of Borgman but this movie feels like a step backwards, like borgman made for children but messed up so it's technically for adults. But take out the guns and violence and drug references and change everyone to kids with paintball guns having a fun Saturday in the fields then wow what a movie. But we end up instead with something that comes across as incredibly pretentious, thinking itself of a higher standard than a randomized cat & mouse game movie popular in the 1980s but absolutely nothing new here. That's my opinion. I did however enjoy some of the conversations between Bax and the daughter. The drug references were also very clever.

This Dutch director has always made me think of the Coen Brothers atmosphere. I have watched nearly all of his films, a very unique experiment. You can not foresee any of those crazy and riveting tales. Quentin Dupieux could also be compared with this director. It is very hard to describe without spoiling the whole story. There are many of those films from Northern Europe, you just have to be lucky to get them. I belong to those who were that lucky. Just enjoy. I can't imagine you don't.

Typical Van Warmerdam movie: absurd and funny, and for most an acquired taste. I thoroughly enjoyed the movie but the ending was not satisfactory, as if they ran out of budget for a final part. Like jazz improv, I think an absurd plot should return (within reach) to a realistic home.

Two things bugged me though:

• Drug use incapacitated a number of characters at different times, which seemed nonfunctional regarding the plot, unless the argument is to be able to shift focus to other characters. In this vein, it seemed unnecessarily crowded with characters that did not seem to add much (for example, Ramon's girlfriend)
• Continuously running/locking in and out of rooms in this tiny bungalow (or through the reeds) seemed an unnecessary distraction as well, and looses its effect after a while.

I can't help but think that addressing the last two points could have been used to add a bit more depth to the characters, their relationships, or a more satisfying penultimate act.