Leef!

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.

Leef! Is about Anna (Monic Hendrickx), an obstetrician and her family. Her real dream is to be a writer, but because of her mother she never had the self-confidence to become one. They have a problem as a family, in fact they have everything but they don't manage to feel happy. One of her daughters is a problem child and the other one has a weak heart and her husband Paul (Peter Blok) is cheating on her.

The premiere of Leef! was a real strange one, that was because of the director Willem van de Sande Bakhuyzen died just two days before the premiere. I had a real double feeling about it because I'm a big fan of him so it was difficult the give an objective judge about the movie right away. Now it's a while ago and I think I can do it.

Leef! is a great movie. First of all the acting in this movie is fantastic. Monic Hendrickx and Peter Blok are good as always, but also Sophie van Winden was great, it's one of her first movies, she did a great job. The camera is moving constantly, which creates entity in the movie. The music also creates the right feeling. The last days I heard a few times that people link this movie with movies like Magnolia and Short cuts. I don't think that's right. Leef! is good enough to judge it on itself. What is also said a lot is the the movie is (too) complex, indeed you have to think and pay attention to get everything, but since when is that not a good point. I like it to watch a movie actively. Of course there are also a few minuses, at the end there are too much improbabilities and cliché's to add everything together. So at the end it is too much of a feel good movie. But don't get me wrong, Leef! is a fantastic movie that shows real problems and that is harrowing to see. Leef! is about people, it's a movie with a heart and it is really a must to see.

I'm looking forward to see the last movie of Willem van de Sande Bakhuyzen, Ik omhels je met 1000 armen, which you can see in 2006.

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.

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.

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.