Piece of My Heart

Please note 30% of viewing time is promoting Tabacco Industry, Very bad!

Amsterdam, the 1970s. While Olga and Irma, both talented dancers, try to survive in the demanding and ambitious ballet world, Olga is launched as the great new star of the Royal Ballet.

Amsterdam, the 1970s. While Olga and Irma, both talented dancers, try to survive in the demanding and ambitious ballet world, Olga is launched as the great new star of the Royal Ballet. Soon Olga also discovers the dark side of her talent and Irma has to watch how her best friend succumbs to the pressure of performance, losing herself in the dissolute nightlife. Piece of My Heart tells the story of exceptional talent, but above all that of an ultimate friendship.

Beautifully shot, well directed and fantastic performances by the two leading actresses. The film feels both intimate and realistic in its portrayal of a beautiful friendship, and the raw humanity in the face of the massive pressure of succeeding in a creative and competitive world.

So often this type of film goes overboard in the drama of exaggerated characters in the world of the arts. This director kept a narrow, retrained and very realistic focus on the arc of the main story lines and allowed the friendship to develop naturally, with many poignant moments.

I'll remember this film and the two actresses for a long time to come.

Piece of My Heart Is a new drama directed by Dunya & Desie director Dana Nechushtan.

The film is set in Amsterdam in the 1970s and is about dancers Olga (Roos Englebert) and her friend Irma (Elaine Meijerink). Both are trying to break through in the ballet world. When Olga manages to break through as one of the best ballet dancers in the Netherlands, she learns that in addition to the talent and prizes, there is also a dark side to this title.

While Olga tries to keep her title, she has to lead a hard life full of training and a strict diet. Irma sees how hard it is for her friend and tries to support her as much as possible, but this is also getting harder for her.

With this film they have made a more fictional story about the life of the real ballet dancer Olga de Haas, who really broke through in the seventies as the best ballet dancer in the Netherlands. Furthermore, for this film they seem to have been inspired by the Oscar-winning film Black Swan from 2010. This film may seem familiar to connoisseurs of Black Swan.

Dana Nechushtan has done a great job of making the film look realistic as if it really takes place in the 1970s. The film sets and costumes help a lot with this. The passage of time in the film itself can sometimes seem a bit messy when they sometimes suddenly make a time jump forward in the story without giving any real clear details about what exactly happened during this jump. If they had paid more attention to this, the story itself would have been a bit clearer to the viewers.

The acting is well done by the two protagonists, but this film is only their first acting work in a film for both. They come across as good and credible ballet dancers, both trying to become the best in their profession. Furthermore, they can sometimes come across as a bit stiff in scenes in which they have little else to do. The fact that the two characters, in addition to being friends, were also rivals in the ballet world is also not really noticeable, because the two usually come across as friendly towards each other. This became a bit clearer in Black Swan, but also portrayed in a more dark way.

I know very little about ballet -and I usually do not get it- this movie helped me a bit to understand why it is loved.

In a way ballet was only backdrop for telling a beautiful story about friendship, ambition, talent, longing for freedom, and parenting. Without a line in the movie Tina de Bruin had a great role - and her acting really gripped me. The two leading roles were also very relatable, helped by a script that had the ups and downs of friendship spot on.

The setting of Amsterdam was done in a way that brought me back in time, and had the look and feel of that time. And yes, there was a lot of smoking that time...