Het debuut

(1977) The Debut/ Het debuut (In Dutch with English subtitles) DRAMA

Adapted from the novel by Hester Albach, co-written and directed by Nouchka van Brakel, it has 14 year old Carolien (Marina de Graaf) bike racing with her peers to the school. And when she come's back from school, she along with her parents of Peter (Dolf de Vries) and Anne (Kitty Courbois) are at the airport to greet her dad's old best friends just arriving from Zambia, Africa, Hugo (Gerard Cox) and his wife, Rita (Pleuni Touw). And as a result of Carolien agreeing to show them to look at a place she begins to sense a connection with Hugo when he began to jump on top of a bed like she was doing.

Like most movies about adolescent s/he may look 14, but if imdb is correct that the actress playing Carolien by the name of Marina de Graaf that she was born in 1959 then she was already an adult when she played the role of an adolescent, for she would have been 19 years old during the movie's release. And may have been 18 when she played the role of a 14 year old when the age of consent in the Netherlands is according to Google is 16 years of age. And I get it, it's the notion of an older man making out with an underage almost twice her age can rub some viewers the wrong way, except that 1) like Lolita, it is adapted from an actual novel, and #2) I am presuming, without reading the novel, it is based on the character in which a 14 yrs old is required. And in the film it is supposed to depict a generation gap, as Carolien is young and active who still loves to eat chocolate bars, and dance in dance floors at a disco, too wild for an older person who lives with her parents.. As opposed to her older counterpart, Hugo who is besides being older, he is inactive with a job and a wife he has to take care of, for the only thing they both have in common is perhaps the love making, she yearned for maturity and maturity is what she got she felt she does not get that from her peers. There's a scene where a former peer attempts to make an advance towards her and she tries to make an attempt to reject his advances very adamently. The scene where Caroliene is ridiculed by her friends/ peers as a result of telling her best friend, Tanja (Sandrien van Brakel) making out with a guy old enough to be her dad which very slowly pushes them away from them if she continues to see him. She realizes the relationship can no longer proceed. What is asinine about this, was that at the beginning, Hugo appeared to be just as active and silly as much as Carolien but it's like, later on he's no longer that type of person anymore, which is it? In other words it's a cross between 1962 "Lolita" and the 1977 French film" Un moment d'égarement" or in English terms "Lolita" and "Blame It On Rio". I give this movie the same rating as I give "Lolita" which is a 6 out of 10 nothing more nothing less.

I'm not sure what every one's complaint is. If my math is correct the young actress was 18 when doing this film. I don't know exactly when filming was, just the release date so it is possible that she was 17 3/4 or something. I doubt that made any difference in the Netherlands in the 70s anyways. Just because she says she's 14 it's called acting. If you want to complain check out what Mario van Peeples father made him do in the movie Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss when Mario was 14. It involves unsimulated sex with a woman who plays a prostitute in the film. Very strange film that would never have been made if not for Bill Cosby throwing his money into the film to be made. The Debut is much better film.

Daring theme. I like that. A sexual relationship between an adult and a child/youngster. And without showing the child as merely a victim of an adult predator. The sex is wanted and enjoyed by both partners. At the same time, the movie does also not fall in the other extreme of showing the girl as basically a seductress. At the end, she can be seen as the victim of the relationship, but not because she was too young or too experienced to understand about sex. She is a victim because she was dreaming of more, of a lasting relationship. While he neither can nor wants to leave his wife. She is a victim like so many mistresses of married men are victims.

Daring theme, yes. But when one looks further, little more positive can be said. The movie does not succeed in making the characters live. For a part this has to do with the plot, that keeps looking at the relationship from the outside, we do not really get to the inside of the characters, which is especially pitiful in the last third of the movie. But most is lost simply through bad acting and directing. Most obvious is this in the girl who plays Carolien's girlfriend. She seems to just be saying her lines, without any realization that these lines have some kind of emotional meaning. And that she should use a tone of voice that fits that meaning. And Marina de Graaf (Carolien) and several other supporting actors make a similar type of mistake. All in all, the movie is too much TELLING its story instead of SHOWING it.

The idea is good, and has the possibility of giving a movie that leads to moral discussions amongst its viewers. But then one would need to give the viewer some interest in its characters first. And that's where this movie fails miserably. One can even wonder whether it HAS any characters.

I was shocked to find out that this was a debut of a woman director. I was sure this movie was a male fantasy of older men being wanted by a younger woman, in this case , a 14 year old "woman" or child. Not sure what the age of consent is in Netherlands but most likely the whole story is based around a statutary rape. That's why I was shocked when I learnt this was made by a woman director.

This woman's lib director made this debut with a full lengt movie, along with her two main actors, Marina de Graaf and Gerard Cox. The story is not new ; young girl falls in love with elderly man. Why Nouchka van Brakel choose this (lousy) script to make her debut movie is beyond my comprehension. Perhaps something that was lingering from her own past made her decide to do this terrible flick. The directing sucks, the acting is cardboard character trying to remember their lines, subsequently the dubbing is also awfull; a chance missed: perhaps in dubbing they could ad some sincerity and believability, Alas, this is a movie to quickly forget. I gave it two stars instead of one, because the young actress, Marina de Graaf shows some attempts to act naturally, her mother in this "movie" gives away one of many of her bad performances in Dutch films. The man this young girl falls in love with, is mediocre and let you think why the hell a young girl would fall in love with him . Thinking, the director of this exploitation maovie calls herself a Feminist, you wonder why she adds so many nude scenes of a young girl into her debut. Stinks !