Character

Filmrecensie van Jan-Willem Swane

• The Netherlands, 1997
  
• 120 minutes
  
• With: Jan Decleir, Fedja van Huet, Victor Low, Tamar van den Dop, Betty Schuurman, Hans Kesting
  
• Director: Mike van Diem
  
• Screenplay: Mike van Diem in cooperation with Ruud van Megen and Laurens Geels; based on 'Dreverhaven en Katadreuffe' and 'Karakter' by F. Bordewijk
  
• Director of photography: Rogier Stoffers
  
• Sound: Peter Marnier en Marcel de Hoogd
  
• Editor: Jessica de Koning
  
• Music: Het Paleis van Boem
  
• Seen: April 8, 1997, Sneak Preview, Camera Utrecht

While the last years a few Dutch low budget movies did reasonably well (Zusje, Blind date), the big producers weren't to succesfull. The Oscar for Antonia did give some hope, but before that prize, the film wasn't seen by many people. Maybe First Floor Features can make a change. The promotioncampaign shows that they have big plans with Character, the movie that's based on the novel of F. Bordewijk.

You cannot say that the productioncompany of Dick Maas and Laurens Geels doesn't has guts. To give six and a half million guilders [3 million dollars, a very big budget for a Dutch movie] to the director Mike van Diem, who on the one hand has won a Gouden Kalf (the Dutch Oscar) and a student oscar with a short movie, but who hadn't made a long movie, is a step of bravoure. Especially when he films a story that doesn't seem to appeal to a broad audience.

While the movie does have the atmospere of the book of 1938, Van Diem only has taken the main storyline. It seems that he has asked himself how the writer Bordewijk would have written the story if it was meant as a film script. In the first scene we see that the thirty years old Katadreuffe (Fedja van Huet) comes to tell the old bailiff Dreverhaven (Jan Decleir) that he has become a lawyer and that he doesn't wan't to do anything with him. After a while Katadreuffe returns and starts a fight. In the next scene we see him in an interrogationroom. The police has found the body of Dreverhaven. In bits and pieces Katadreuffe tells the history. He is the child that Dreverhaven has fathered on his housekeeper (Betty Schuurman). The proud woman has left the house and ignores the gifts and the marriage proposals of Dreverhaven.

The young Katadreuffe becomes as stuborn as his mother. Because of a commercial experiment he gets in financial trouble and the creditor happens to be his father. Dreverhaven tries to strangle his son financially. The son gets a simple job on a lawyers office and puts everything, even love, aside for his ambitions. Communication with his mother gets more difficult. His only friend is the communist Jan Maan (Hans Kesting) but they also grow apart. A final confrontation with his father comes nearer and nearer.

It's been a good decission not to follow the original story slavishly. Because of that the accent is more on the action than on the words, and the movie is thrilling form begin to end. The open end of the book wouldn't have worked in the movie. The voice over is a bit out of tune: Van Huet doesn't speak like someone who is being interrogated, but as if he reads a book aloud.

Character is an raw and robust movie, which fits excellently with the stories of struggle between father and son and the impossible loves that movie wants to tell. An important element in the atmospere are the locations, among others in Poland. We see an filthy, grey, hardened city that's magnificent at the same time. The interior of the lawyers office is one of the most beatiful I've seen in a long time.

The acting of Jan Decleir is as robust as the sets. All the time dressed in a coat that makes a statue of him, he plays a man that can hide his feelings so well, that you know for certain that somewhere there beats a heart that will explode one day. Decleir plays his part so fysically, that he has lost a tooth at the shootings. The light note is offered by Victor Löw, who plays the lawyer and Katadreuffes mentor De Gankelaar. With his weird speech he gives a great parody on the office life. Betty Schuurman plays the mother with an impressive silence. Fedja van Huet gives Kasadreuffe the necessary naivety en youthly thoughtlessness.

The music by Het Paleis van Boem plays an important part in the movie. While music is often used to patch up less succesfull scenes, here it is an integral part of the movie.

Character is a gripping movie that's strong in word and image. The atmosphere is carried through consequently in dialogue, image, acting and music. First Floor Features deserves a compliment for their guts and Mike van Diem has proven to be a very promissing director.

Rating (0-10): 8