Unter den Palmen

I caught this film once (about 10 minutes in) while traveling.

I ended up staying in the hotel to finish the movie. I found the camera work stylistic and at time distracting but enjoyed the movie a lot.

The use of blue wash does make the film appear cold but it also enhances some parts of the film.

I will admit it took me a lot of x-referencing to find the full title and I ended up finding it on IMDb by referencing Udo Kier

I have searched periodically since then for it on DVD but have not yet had any success.

Watch it if you can!

cwr

I've seen three hour films that went by quicker than this one. The plot was thin and extremely slow. The dialogues were oh, so meaningful and boring. But the worst part for me was the ice cold atmosphere of the film. The blue neon light and the minimal music were all pretty enough, but because of the lack of an interesting story it's all that you remember at the end of the film: coldness.

The visual beauty of this film caught me completely. Nobody who knows Rotterdam has seen this city like this before. The cinematographie and styling are of a very high quality and it's obvious the director chose to use these ways to tell the story. You can tell that this film is made with a lot of thought and a particular sensitive, maybe female approach. I find it unfair to intellectualize this emotional film, but the different layers in which this film is told are very interesting. For Dutch cinema this film is a true gem, maybe too special for most people to understand or appreciate in its own right.

The movie follows David (Helmut Berger) and his girlfriend Tanja. They rob people to make a living. All goes wrong when David finds a photograph of a young guy (Thom Hoffman) and falls in love and decides to find the guy. Torn between his girlfriend, his controlling brother (Udo Kier) and new found love, David is destined to make a fatal choice. Helmut Berger is sometimes uneasy with the part of David which actually seems very close to some of his real life experiences. The acting is deliberately cold and distant as is the music. The cinematography , art direction and styling are very good considering the budget. It shows that the director has a vision and an eye for detail. But as a whole the film fails to impress, especially on an emotional level. It simply remains too cold and too experimental. (A more developed script with less arty dialogue would have helped as well) . Nevertheless this movie is unique and there are not many films that get made in Holland that have this sort of bravoure. Most films are uninteresting stories but without the great visuals and great music. I give it 8 out of 10.

Though this movie is visually very attractive, opening with night shots of Rotterdam in a Bladerunner, bigcity style, it can not hide that the story is actually very thin. after 20 minutes the effect of uncorrected tube-lights have lost their charm and you start to notice that the dialogue is really slow and not that interesting. If the goal of the movie is to make you really feel the uncomfortable atmosphere it succeeded. The uncomfortable feeling you get with this movie is helped by the bad dialogue and the visual abundance to cover this up. Helping also is the way the soundtrack, though really good, has been put under the worst pieces of dialogue that clearly needed some help. All this makes you hope for a good twist at the end of the movie that will make the time spent listening to semi-filosophicall chitchat worthwhile. Too bad this twist doesn't come and you are left wondering how it is possible that a 70 minutes movie can feel like it took 150 minutes. A waste of money and talent.