Plot

It's the hot summer of 1972. On the 9th floor of a tower block on the outskirts of a Dutch provincial town the sixties finally kicked in. Change is in the air and actually materializes the moment a new resident, an artist named Loes, moves in. Soon everything will change for the family of the 12-year old Duch. To his dad, Bob, the new neighbor symbolizes all his doubts about his plotless existence. She is both adventurous and eccentric and almost without a second thought he decides to move in with Loes and her daughter, two apartments away from his old family. The children don't fully realize the drama unfolding. While their parents try to rediscover themselves, or try to preserve what was once theirs, the children focus on the future outside. Maybe truly perceiving things as they are. Duch, the son of the family, has two big passions in life. The manned mission to the moon and the dreamy, beautiful, Valium addicted neighbor 'aunt' Mary. She is a sailors wife, often alone, and for Duch a way to discover his nascent longings, which she encourages in her own ambiguous ways. An omnipresent feeling of finiteness descends on all when the NASA announces to stop the manned missions to the moon. A sense of urgency too: an era will come to its end. Will Duch manage to conquer the love of his neighbor? Will his mother Piet be able to reunite her family? And will his father Bob learn to handle his newfound freedom? After that long and hot summer, on the evening of the live broadcast of the Apollo 17 launch, December 14 1972, the story reaches its inevitable climax.—Anonymous