Leef!

I was studying at the University of Amsterdam last year when I would pass the movie theater in Haarlemstrat(sp) and see the announcement for the film. I wanted so much to see the film especially because of Monic Hendrickx, but the film was not subtitled yet for English. Recently I found it on Amazon. It had English subtitles and it was in PAL, but since I own several PAL movies, I now own a portable DVD player that plays all regions. Alas, after a long wait, I was not disappointed. It is a celebration of life and I felt inspired by it. I hope this film is more widely recognized because it was perfect in every way. A few years back Zeus and Zo, another Dutch film, was nominated for the Academy Awards. I have nothing against Z&Z, but Leef should not be overlooked.

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.

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.

For a movie that intends to celebrate life, this movie has the paradoxical quality that everything in it is highly artificial. As a girl suffers from a heart attack, for example, the person who is responsible for this dies in a car crash, so that his heart can be implanted by the girl - and to make it even more far-fetched: the car accident is a reminiscence of an almost-drowning-incident more than ten years earlier with the same actors (the mother Sybille saving the life of the boy, saves then in fact the life of her daughter). These forced plot lines are to be fond almost every scene.

The dialogs contain a similar paradox. The real subject of all speech is never named, yet the single sentences are perfectly clear and fit too perfect and very artificial to the things said before. This creates a sense of deepens that may do it well on stage (the scenario of Maria Goos was originally a lay) but on television it makes your stomach turn more and more as the film advances. And then I have not mentioned all drama and the sweet ending that catalyze this.

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.