Het debuut

To understand this film it helps if you've seen the director's 1979 work "A Woman like Eve". Across the two films there's an obvious attempt to portray women's lives and emotions and also to make some comment on the mores of society (at that time).

The film has a dated 70's look to it but it also makes it interesting in a time capsule kind of way. Is the nudity exploitative and there to help sell tickets? Or an attempt to break down taboos by showing it and asking "what's all the fuss about?" Seeing some of the director's other work makes me think the latter, though it's probably a bit of both.

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.

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 !

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.