(1977) The Debut/ Het debuut
(In Dutch with English subtitles)
DRAMA
Adapted from the novel by Hester Albach, co-written and directed by Nouchka van Brakel, it has 14 year old Carolien (Marina de Graaf) bike racing with her peers to the school. And when she come's back from school, she along with her parents of Peter (Dolf de Vries) and Anne (Kitty Courbois) are at the airport to greet her dad's old best friends just arriving from Zambia, Africa, Hugo (Gerard Cox) and his wife, Rita (Pleuni Touw). And as a result of Carolien agreeing to show them to look at a place she begins to sense a connection with Hugo when he began to jump on top of a bed like she was doing.
Like most movies about adolescent s/he may look 14, but if imdb is correct that the actress playing Carolien by the name of Marina de Graaf that she was born in 1959 then she was already an adult when she played the role of an adolescent, for she would have been 19 years old during the movie's release. And may have been 18 when she played the role of a 14 year old when the age of consent in the Netherlands is according to Google is 16 years of age. And I get it, it's the notion of an older man making out with an underage almost twice her age can rub some viewers the wrong way, except that 1) like Lolita, it is adapted from an actual novel, and #2) I am presuming, without reading the novel, it is based on the character in which a 14 yrs old is required. And in the film it is supposed to depict a generation gap, as Carolien is young and active who still loves to eat chocolate bars, and dance in dance floors at a disco, too wild for an older person who lives with her parents.. As opposed to her older counterpart, Hugo who is besides being older, he is inactive with a job and a wife he has to take care of, for the only thing they both have in common is perhaps the love making, she yearned for maturity and maturity is what she got she felt she does not get that from her peers. There's a scene where a former peer attempts to make an advance towards her and she tries to make an attempt to reject his advances very adamently. The scene where Caroliene is ridiculed by her friends/ peers as a result of telling her best friend, Tanja (Sandrien van Brakel) making out with a guy old enough to be her dad which very slowly pushes them away from them if she continues to see him. She realizes the relationship can no longer proceed. What is asinine about this, was that at the beginning, Hugo appeared to be just as active and silly as much as Carolien but it's like, later on he's no longer that type of person anymore, which is it? In other words it's a cross between 1962 "Lolita" and the 1977 French film" Un moment d'égarement" or in English terms "Lolita" and "Blame It On Rio". I give this movie the same rating as I give "Lolita" which is a 6 out of 10 nothing more nothing less.
