This film is many things but a skillful film it is not. The actors are good but they do not get space to carry the story, also not Elise Schaap who is playing the protagonist. Antoinette Beumer, the director, is a big name in film and tv in The Netherlands. She is also a sister of Dutch actor in Hollywood: Famke Janssen. This film is a hot mess. It does not have vision and it has no solid soulful, artistic structure. You can see that Elise Schaap and Pierre Bokma are really delivering as good actors but the director is letting this whole project down. The film is based on Antoinette Beumer's own book with the same title. A story in a book is built on words and sentences. Film is first and foremost a visual language where language and music also play an important role. I don't know what it is with Dutch filmmakers. Sometimes you think: 'Yes, now we are going places!' with a tv-series like 'Oogappels' or even with a series like 'Gooische Vrouwen' (coincidentally both tv-series have Wil Koopman at the creative steering wheel) and often, like in this case, you think: 'Oh, we are stuck in the bad part of the 1980's,' film wise. Or you think: 'This is a complete newbie, still a student, trying to make his or her first film.' I really do not understand how this always can happen within the Dutch film industry. Perhaps Antoinette Beumer is too influential and no one is giving her true honest feedback? I mean, the editing is also so bad: the film drags on and on. It doesn't have speed but it also lacks the cool intentional slowness a really well made film can have. The exhibition of the characters and story is also an unclear mess. As a director you need to have a vision with a clear visual language, with clear visual structural ideas. Here you see some use of metaphors which in fact are a bit childlike, it is not the language of a seasoned visual artist. And really, as a film director you need to be a visual artist and not just the captain on board of a ship. Directing is so much more than telling others what to do. And much more than just coming up with a few metaphors and some ideas without real structural roots. Without a real artistic, idiosyncratic language. I also don't understand why this film was the opening film of the Dutch Film Festival, when the film premiered. I mean, why? The film is not delivering. The actors do their best but the script, the directing, the editing, the soundscapes, it all is underperforming, to say the least. It is a mess. Perhaps some other director could re-edit this film? Make something out of it with real soul? Perhaps very abstract and artistic or otherwise, with some unused footage from the cutting room floor, a real coherent commercial film? Some of the language used, the dialogues between doctors and patients, or other medical professionals, it is so archaic, so not in touch with real life. The dialogues and use of language are often really theatrical and old fashioned. And what's up with the nudeness? I am not a prude, the 'Nymphomaniac' films are excellent for example. But here, the revealing of certain body parts feel so much like a Dutch film from the 1970's or 1980's, many of those films used nudeness in a non-functional way. Here in this film it is also superfluous. This film gets just 4 stars from me. (If you watch 'Faithfully Yours', (2022) by Dutch director André van Duren then you can see the opposite: a skillful, beautifully directed, photographed and acted film)
