De Passievrucht is an adaptation of the debute novel of the relatively young but talented Dutch writer Karel Glastra van Loon. Years ago I read his second novel (Lisa's adem, or 'Lisa's breath'), was fascinated by it, and planned on reading his first. As usual, I never got to it. Fortunately, they recently made a movie out of his book, so last night I went and saw it in the cinema.
They did a great job. This movie is about a man who finds out he has been sterile all his life. This has two consequences: first, he and his girlfriend will never be able to have kids of their own, and second, his thirteen years old son can't actually be his son. His wife, who died nine years ago, can't tell him who the real father is anymore. But he must know. So he starts his quest for the painful truth. A number of old friends are interrogated, and his girlfriend suffers the consequences. She's in deep pain about never being able to have children, and meanwhile, all he does is chase his own nightmare.
How events eventually unfold will remain a mystery to you, my dear reader, until you watch the movie. Which I highly recommend you to do. It's a great movie about father-son relationships, about love, about sex and passion, about cheating. The movie's got humor, it has tears, it has a lot of anger. And it features the ever-sympathetic actor Frank Lammers!!
