Leef!

This film is a delicate and thoughtful celebration of life, not only because of the beautiful rendering of family-life in its highs and lows but also because of the uplifting message director Van De Sande Bakhuysen leaves with his audience. For somebody who had to live with the knowing that he would die of cancer, the director urges the audience to stop looking for guilt or even forced happiness and start life from this moment on. The film itself may be masked propaganda for conformity and bourgeoisie, but delivers a satisfying and tear jerking portrait of love lost and refound but most importantly about the responsibility we all have not only to make ourselves happy but also the people around us, who rely on us for their joy in life.

This movie is about how important it is to live your life to the fullest. To live your dreams, follow your instincts, to resist social pressure, stay true to yourself, to become who you really are. Leading character Anna, a hard-working wife and mother of two daughters, has always wanted to be a writer. But her work, husband and two daughters have always stood between her and her passion. A sick daughter, an unfaithful husband, a demanding old mother, and her own social commitment make it hard for her to sit down and write her autobiography. Then dramatic events make her realize that she has only one mission: to be a writer, to finally live! ('Leef'!) Several different sub-stories develop and finally come together in a breathtaking, jubilant climax. Award-winning script-writer Maria Goos is at her best here, and so is director Willem van de Sande-Bakhuysen, who was terminally ill when the shooting started and who died shortly after 'Live! was completed.

I expected a lot from this director and the screenwriter, their previous cooperation on 'Cloaca' led to a masterpiece. This film however is a big disaster. It contains too many dramatic events spread over too many characters. Everybody in this film is totally wasted, the dialog is purely psychological jadajada and serves no function in telling a story that connects the different characters in a plot. As a viewer it is impossible to connect to one of the characters for longer than 2 minutes, their problems are merely unbelievable entertainment that just goes in with your popcorn but does not have any meaning. What also puzzles me is why they did not work with the same Director of Photography as in Cloaca, as it looked fantastic. Leef! however has a bleached out look, Using very hard light on the faces of the characters, I guess the idea was to enlarge their mental status by making them look more tormented, not very interesting to look at though.

... in Dutch film that this film did not win any more prizes. For starter, the acting is really great, especially Peter Blok, Al. And Sterre Herstel gives us the full range of her not inconsiderable, 10 year old talent. This film is multi-layered and isn't ashamed to explore that. The director isn't afraid to be accused of pretentiousness. And rather than use the meandering story lines of past and present throughout the film, he sensed correctly that that would be a gimmick. So after half an hour the story is more linear, more present-time oriented. The whole mother-is-both-instrument-of-death-as-well-as-life might seem a feel good solution geared towards an happy end, but one can see it simply as poetic justice. Or butterfly wings. Or an underlining of the statement that we should live life to the fullest, because we control so very little in our life. Of course there's life's little irony that the director of Live! died two days before the premiere, but in the end what does that matter to the film? Nothing.

With Simon well over a year ago, I had high hopes for Dutch cinema. This was a great film, about genuine people dealing with all things life (and death) in a genuine way. At least it got some well-deserved recognition outside the Netherlands, although I'm not sure how the movie performed across the pond- but I guess it stirred things up quite a bit in the US because of its daring content.

Anyway, for those expecting Leef! to prolong the high standard set by Simon, prepare to be vastly disappointed. The film is incredibly pretentious in style and presentation. Why did it have to take 108 minutes of awkward dialogue and often pointless scenes to get to that point? I have no problem with it being pretentious, but not living up to it I do have a problem with. The camera-work and editing, especially in the first half, are overly artsy, sometimes hysterical and often completely unnecessary. On the contrary, it harms some of the (admittedly fine) performances in such a way that we cannot relate to the characters in any way, except for maybe Sybille, played by Anne-Wil Blankers, a great actress who is wholly out of place here. Jeroen Krabbé, always a treat, has a small part which is fine, but ruined by the horrific editing in that particular scene. A shame, I say.

The dialogue is typical Dutch theatre fare, in that it is overly pretentious and artificial, which is a major gripe I have with Dutch theatre anyway. Even though this might have worked better on stage, it's still far too stiff and and insignificant to make the audience relate to the characters on an emotional level. Why not just trim it down and get to the point? Being mundane is no sin if the delivery is good. Here we the see actors struggling with lines they themselves most likely found to be awkward, which explains the wooden acting on the whole, I guess.

Overall, what could have been a wonderful film about (family) life is a missed opportunity. This film gets lost in its own pretentiousness because of its lack of content and genuine emotional depth. Which, ultimately, to me, makes it a pointless affair.