Reviews

The play "Cloaca" was, in the year 2002, one of the most succesful plays of that year. And because of the fact that in Holland, we don't have lots of issues we want to film, 'they' decided to make a movie of "Cloaca", with the same (great) actors as in th play. 'They' succeeded. The movie is one of the best Dutch movies ever, if not THE best, I'm still thinking of calling it that. The story is about a group of men, who are all 40 years old. Back when they were students, they were best friends, but after several years, the relation between these men went down hill. One of the guys, Pieter (Pierre Bokma), has a problem, and to solve this problem he needs the help of his friends, in special the help of Tom (Peter Blok) while he is a lawyer. But Tom en his two other friends Joep (Gijs Scholten van Aschat), who is running for minister, and Maarten (Jaap Spijkers), a director, have enough problems for themselves. And the only thing they can focuse on, is there own problem. This delivers some great scenes, like the one in which Maarten is trying to tell Joep that he had sex with his 18 year old daughter, when they were preparing Maarten's latest play. When Joep enters the room, he tells Maarten how wonderful he liked the play, gives Maarten a hug and gives him no chance to tell his story.

This is typical for this movie; no one listens to the other, and this is brilliantly played by the best actors we have in Holland. Gijs Scholten van Aschat (who had the chance to play the raper in Lars von Triers "Dogville", but didn't do it because he wanted to make "Cloaca") plays Joep on a wonderfull way, and also the other die hard theater actors Pierre Bokma, Peter Blok and Jaap Spijkers give a fantastic performance. If you like good acting: GO SEE THIS ONE!!!

Vivante is a French film, about a young, 19 year-old girl, who, on her way back from singing lessons, get's raped by a group of men. She doesn't tell anyone anything about what happened to her, because she thinks she can solve this problem by herself. She get's addicted to drink, drugs and sex with unknown men. She even tries to commit suicide. Only after 8 months she dares to talk to her father and brother about it, and that's when she dares to live again. This movie ain't "the best you've ever seen", it ain't "the first movie about rape". But it shore gives you a moment to think "wtf?". After you've seen this movie, you start to think about the impact of such a thing, and that's, I think, the impact of this movie, it gives you a good look, what's it really like. You hear about rape more often, but thanks to films like this one, you keep remembering that it's not normal. It's not only the story that's great. Also the performance of the 19 year old Vahina Giocante is very good.

The only reason I saw "De Flat", was because of the fact that Victor Löw is in it. In Holland he's a pretty famous actor, an known as the only method actor we have got (hay, it's a small country). The day this film was on also Oliver Stone's Wall Street, and The Devil's Advocate came on tv, but no, I had to see "De Flat", when I saw it, it looked like a really bad B-movie, and that is, when I thought about it, exactly what it is. Both actors are pretty good, but in this movie they both don't know what the hell they are doing there. Even Victor Löw, who's known as a verbal machine gun, doesn't come out of his own words, and that draws the whole movie

Festen is one of the best movies I have ever seen, it's one of those movies of which you wouldn't expect them to be good, but then when you're watching damn, you don't even dare to go to the toilet, scared of missing the best part. It's very well filmed, on a real dogma way, and the actors do their work verry good, the play so well, that you get to doubt weither their actors or real people, and for me there has to hapen a lot before I can see that: "people on the screen, remain people on the screen", that's what I always said, but after watching Festen, it definetelly changed... Thank Danemark for this great experience