Zus & zo

an oscar nomination? why? this is first of all a play...not a movie. i don't think the people who made this ever heard of the "don't tell them, show them" concept. and if only the dialog was funny. but i didn't think it was. i missed the most important thing in this movie, the clear reason i should care (or understand) why the sisters wanted to stop the wedding. Yes, to keep the hotel. But why, other then for sentimental reasons, make such a big fight about it. There should have been a stronger reason for them to try and stop the wedding. All in all, it was a boring experience for me because i didn't care about (nor understood) the people and it just wasn't funny.

"Zus & Zo" is all about three adult sisters who conspire to thwart their gay brother's forthcoming wedding thus preventing him from inheriting a beautiful hotel on the Portuguese coast. Their late patriarch wanted his gay son to go "straight", so he left the hotel to him if he married. However, the bro wants to acquire the hotel with a marriage of convenience so he can sell it to pay for transsexual surgery - something the distaff want to prevent each for their own selfish reasons. This Dutch flick gets busy and stays busy with nonstop prattling about the "this and that" (zus and zo) of the family, the bro, the hotel, and miscellaneous side plots making it a beautifully filmed and wonderfully cast dialogue-intensive subtitlefest for those who don't spekadalanguage. Mildly amusing, sometimes sentimental, occasionally poignant, always enjoyable, and incessantly yappy, "Zus & Zo" is just too much reading for too little payoff. (B-)

this movie is about a gay guy, Nino and his upcoming wedding, consisting of his 3 deranged sisters, his fake fiancée Bo, his ex-boyfriend Felix and a range of oddball characters. the plot centres more on the mess-uped lives of the 3 sisters and Nino himself. what strikes me as senseless, is that Felix, a gay man willing got back to his ex-boyfriend who would be undergoing sex change to become a woman. i am confused, is he gay or not? and why would a gay man want to have sex with a woman? as a straight man, i would never ever want to have sex with my wife or girlfriend after she have changed sex to become a man. is Nino a man or woman? the story plot is very hazy and jumbled up. all in all the characters are made to look like their lives revolve around sex and nothing much else.

Paula van der Oest's Academy Award-nominated "Zus & Zo" is a lighthearted comedy about events surrounding a wedding involving a gay man. The Netherlands was probably the most advanced country in terms of gay rights by the time that the movie came out, so I figure that there was no controversy about it (2001 in fact saw the establishment of marriage equality in the Netherlands). The movie itself isn't anything special. If you're expecting full-scale wacky comedy - i.e., what you get in a Will Ferrell movie - you won't find it here. This movie's all about the characters' interactions with each other and the issues surrounding the marriage. Not a great movie, but passable.

Co-star Halina Reijn, who plays Bo, later directed the 2022 thriller "Bodies Bodies Bodies".

This movie once again proves the viability of Dutch cinema. It has wit, pace and some very endearing and convincing characters. It shifts through both serious and lightweighted issues without ever losing balance, whilst maintaining a number of different viewpoints (right vs. wrong, true vs. untrue), and perhaps its highest achievement lies in the way it treats a taboo subject (which I will not reveal here) with daring and care. I was particularly touched by the way the two main themes of family and identity were brought to life. I left the cinema just wanting to see my brother and parents again and see how they were doing. It was that good.