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Film: Love Life
Year of production: 2009
UK Release date: 13th June 2011
Distributor: Yellow Knife
Certificate: 15
Running time: 113 mins
Director: Reinout Oerlemans
Starring: Carice van Houten, Anna Drijver, Barry Atsma, Eline Van der Velden, Pierre Bokma
Genre: Drama/Romance
Format: DVD
Country of Production: Netherlands
Language: Dutch
Review by: Calum Reed
Adapted from Ray Kluun’s novel, the original Dutch translation of “Love Life” is “A Woman Goes To The Doctor” - the first line of a joke used popularly in the Netherlands. It isn’t the most sensitive title for a story of a couple torn apart by cancer, but as an autobiographical work, Kluun remains best placed to tell it, and in chronicling his strained relationship with first wife Judith - from their first ever meeting, to her death from the disease just over ten years ago – he gained considerable acclaim, prompting a film adaptation that hit Dutch screens in November 2009.
The film hurtles fairly quickly through time, beginning with the couple, Stijn (Barry Atsma) and Carmen (Carice van Houten), in an extended honeymoon period, in which they are visibly devoted to each other and have a child, Luna. This somewhat idyllic setup is eventually shattered when Carmen finds a lump on her breast, and is promptly diagnosed as having an advanced stage of Cancer that means she must have a mastectomy in order to prevent further spread of the disease.
Despite the announcement that Carmen is officially free of illness, the couple struggle to come to terms with what has happened, and feel powerless to resolve their relationship as husband and wife. They grow apart, as she spends more time in New York and he buries himself in his healthy business and fiery lover Roos (Anna Drijver).
Once the couple are forced to confront their issues, they reach a surprising decision, but must again revise their outlook when Carmen’s health takes another turn for the worse…
Kluun certainly can’t have shied away from flaunting his own inability to remain monogamous, as Love Life offers a decidedly unsympathetic view of Stijn as a fickle follower of alcoholic spirits and one-night stands. While many would scale the moral high-horse to criticise his infidelity (pre or post-cancer), it’s asserted towards the start of Love Life that he and Carmen mutually accept that he will sleep with other women behind her back. Authorial embellishment on Kluun’s part seems unlikely, too, given that Carmen’s attitudes towards the issue don’t remain so free and easy. Stijn’s guilt is often examined through racy images, the most dramatic and misjudged of which occurs in a scene where he watches an attractive blonde girl strip at a club, only for her then to rip a breast off and seductively smother herself in blood. As an hallucinatory sequence, it does little to detract from the film’s aggressive attitude towards sexuality, or the apparentness of Stijn’s insatiable libido.
Together with incessantly trippy visuals of nightlife, Oerlemans offers ideas of escapism and a lack of faith as ironically more dangerous than cancer itself. While Love Life is expectedly quite episodic with regard to Stijn’s internal dilemnas over Roos, Carmen’s realisations of this, and her many medical dramas, it’s refreshingly brisk towards a proverbially-staged subject. The facetious way in which the couple tackle the cancer issue has its charm, as the underlying tense jolts of brazen humour provide a distracting temperance to the growing disconnection between them. The film is an unorthodox presentation of a topic many find difficult to discuss, and its predominant desire to shy away from being clean and sentimental as a production eventually works wonders. Even Carmen’s final moments, while weepy and somewhat conventional, aren’t handled with a great amount of ease or poignancy.
Euro cinema siren Carice van Houten builds upon her impressive showing in 2006’s Black Book with a subtly enlightening turn, while the relatively unknown Atsma revels in his bad-boy role, delving into Stijn’s perpetual commitment struggle with fearless dynamism. It’s to his credit that we’re able to see so far into the psyche of a man many will likely find detestable on the surface.
Love Life is often brutally honest as a disintegration of a relationship founded upon youth itself. Resignation and acceptance still dominate the characters in the film’s second half, but in a way that correlates with the impulsive nature of the couple as lustful, reckless, and undeniably for-the-moment. One senses that even had cancer not cruelly intervened, their story would likely still not have that elusive happy ending.
The refusal to bow to tradition has inevitably emerged from the honesty and authenticity of the source material, but Love Life still has to navigate the problems of being brash and matter-of-fact about the timidly-talked-about issue of cancer. Rather than capitalise and plug the disease, the film feels resentful of it, displaying some baldly insensitive scenes and finding a repetitive mode within its breathless dash through romance, tragedy, and finally romance again. It’s a film people may struggle to take to its heart, but one that deserves recognition; boldly straying away from the cinematic devices of weepy lifetime drama, and still managing to become a devastating, tragic love affair. CR
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Dutch director Reinout Oerlemans's debut feature is a study of a marriage torn apart by cancer.
Stijn (Barry Atsma) and Carmen (Carice van Houten) are a successful couple in their thirties. Both work in advertising in Amsterdam, and they have a young daughter together. But this seemingly perfect life collapses when Carmen is diagnosed with breast cancer.
Stijn, unable to cope with the situation, finds comfort in another woman - Roos (Anna Drijver) - and slowly but surely begins to fall in love with her.
Film: Love Life
Release date: 3rd December 2010
Certificate: TBC
Running time: 105 mins
Director: Reinout Oerlemans
Starring: Carice van Houten, Barry Atsma, Anna Drijver, Jeroen Willems, Eline Van der Velden
Genre: Drama/Romance
Studio: Miracle
Format: Cinema
Country: Netherlands
Film: Black Book
Release date: 30th April 2007
Certificate: 15
Running time: 140 mins
Director: Paul Verhoeven
Starring: Carice van Houten, Sebastian Koch, Thom Hoffman, Halina Reijn, Waldemar Kobus
Genre: Drama/Thriller/War
Studio: Tartan
Format: DVD
Country: Netherlands/Germany/Belgium
Black Book marked a return to filmmaking in his native Netherlands for director Paul Verhoeven, following an extended run in Hollywood with genre successes including Robocop and Total Recall (as well as unmitigated disasters in Showgirls and Hollow Man). Outside of his homeland, Verhoeven made a name for himself as a purveyor of mainstream cinematic sleaze, albeit with subversively hidden depths of astute societal observations underneath the boundary pushing sex and ultra-violence.
Elements of Verhoeven’s directorial trademarks are certainly present in the predominantly Dutch language Black Book, set during one long flashback of Rachel Stein’s (Carice van Houten) traumatic wartime experiences in the dying embers of Nazi occupied Holland. The sole survivor of a Nazi assault on wealthy Jews aboard a boat that was supposed to take them to freedom, Rachel witnesses the cold-blooded massacre of her family and becomes desperate for revenge.
When she joins the Resistance, Rachel is entrusted to use her looks and charm to seduce senior S.S. officer Müntze (Sebastian Koch), and learn vital secrets from the German High Command.
Under the assumed identity of the singing (fully) blond Ellies de Vries, Rachel becomes embroiled in a labyrinth of deceit and duplicity. Rachel experiences firsthand the horrors of Nazi rule, even as she begins to have feelings for the surprisingly charming Müntze, while the bloodshed and bitterness of the Resistance, including the determined Hans Akkermans (Thom Hoffman), continues unflinchingly and unabated…
In the role of Rachel Stein, Carice van Houten gives a fearless performance as a woman faced with incredible adversity amongst horrific circumstances. The leading lady runs a gauntlet of suitably Verhoeven-esque sex and violence, with the character of Rachel undergoing a continuous barrage of close shaves and humiliation, where even at one point a container of human excrement is dumped on her half-naked body.
Van Houten creates believability about a character that has endured great pain and yet has to (for the most part) stay emotionally together in order to gain the revenge she desires. While, at times, the blood spraying shootouts and somewhat gaudy sexual content in the film creep towards parody, van Houten’s tenacity shines through and redeems what otherwise could have been a role exploiting just another pretty female face.
The supporting roles in Black Book are equally well cast, further adding a sense of suspense filled intrigue and genuine emotional development to the film. As senior German officer Müntze, Sebastian Koch portrays a deceptively complex role in which he successfully creates a level of sympathy for a man who is ultimately a member of the Nazi Security Service. His role is a subversion of the typically sadistic German officer one might expect (such as in Waldemar Kobus’s overtly villainous performance as the merciless Günther Franken), and, as such, Koch should be applauded in highlighting the humanity of a character who had nonetheless been previously complicit in the atrocities of the Nazi regime.
Similarly, Thom Hoffman’s portrayal of Hans Akkermans, one of the leaders of the Dutch Resistance, subverts expectations, in that his character (as with many of the Resistance) have their own agendas and personal interests in eliminating the Nazis outside of national pride. However, in an extraordinarily violent yet standout scene in the film, Verhoeven highlights the deeply emotional regret of Resistance member Theo (Johnny de Mol) in killing a German agent, revealing a contrast between the efficient and cold-blooded actions of the Nazis and the killing out of desperate necessity by the Resistance.
The cinematography by Karl Walter Lindenlaub and production design by Wilbert Van Dorp in Black Book is wonderfully evocative of the wartime period in the 1940s, from the bright colours and palatial extravagance of the Nazi headquarters in Holland to the drab underground hideout of the struggling Resistance. The costume design for the Nazi officers, in addition to the fashions of the time and place also appear painstakingly recreated, perhaps most particularly impressive when considering the film’s budget was a fraction of a Hollywood production such as Brian Singer’s Valkyrie (coincidentally, also featuring Carice van Houten).
In contrast to Verhoeven’s earlier foray into World War II with Soldier Of Orange (1977), Black Book carries over a gloss of his Hollywood sensibilities that occasionally takes away from the seriousness of Rachel’s wartime ordeals. While the violence and sexual content is certainly not on the same level as a Starship Troopers or Basic Instinct, the director’s penchant for lasciviousness creates a certain over the top comic effect that doesn’t completely sit well within the film’s wartime drama frame, or Verhoeven’s ambitions for a realistic portrayal of Nazi occupation.
Despite these misgivings about Verhoeven’s style, Black Book is not completely derailed. This is mainly because of the superior performances the director coaxes out of his actors, creating an air of authenticity where otherwise the film may have turned schlocky if only served by scenes with exploding blood squibs in shootout segments. There is good and effective dialogue between characters, where the Israeli kibbutz set bookends and Rachel’s anguished question “When will it ever end?” provide significant food for thought in the horrors of conflict.
Verhoeven (just about) at his best, Black Book serves as a reminder of the provocative auteur’s talents, whilst retaining some of his old and somewhat peculiar fixations. An extraordinary performance from Carice van Houten, however, is the real drawer. DB
