It’s party time outside (2020)

Directed by: Jelle Nesna | 95 minutes | drama | Actors: Abbey Hoes, Georgina Verbaan, Eelco Smits, Michael Muller, Pleun Nijhuis, Roosmarijn van der Hoek, Jip van den Dool, Juna de Leeuw, Romy Gevers, Camelia Ray, Jashayra Oehlers, Mehrnoush Rahmani, Lottie Hellingman, Betty Schuurman, Elisabeth Hesemans, Rivka de Leon, Alexander Elmecky

We know Arthur Japin mainly from his books with a historical or autobiographical slant. ‘The black with the white heart’, for example, about two Ghanaian princes who were brought to the Netherlands in the nineteenth century and raised as Dutch. ‘A splendid defect’ is the story of Lucia, the first lover of the womanizer Giacomo Casanova. His first real novel was published in 2012: ‘But it’s party outside’. The story of the famous singer who files a lawsuit to keep a young girl from a rapist is completely fictional, but at the same time threatens to reveal poignant secrets from her own past. Japin was inspired by the life story of theater diva Karin Bloemen, who was abused for years by her stepfather in her youth. Her sister was also a victim. In 2019 La Bloemen wrote her own biography, ‘My true story’, but Japin’s novel shows striking similarities, but according to the writer is completely fictional. In the promotion of the film version of Japin’s book, ‘Buiten is hetfeest’ (2020), Bloemen does appear regularly, however, because she emphasizes that every opportunity to expose the horrors of sexual abuse and domestic violence should be seized. . “Talk about it. Talking can save you. Because if you don’t talk, you protect the perpetrator. Secrets eat you up.”

Creating strength and hope for young women, that is what producer Reinier Selen, screenwriter Karen van Holst Pellekaan and director Jelle Nesna want with their film. In ‘Buiten is hetfeest’ we meet Sonne (Abbey Hoes), a mid-twenties who has a successful career as a singer-songwriter. Her life is suddenly turned upside down when she receives a phone call that her older sister Hannah has passed away. How, what and where is not clear, only that Sonne is now the guardian of Hannah’s twelve-year-old daughter Lotte (Roosmarijn van der Hoek). The fact that her father Kees (Eelco Smits) also claims custody – and in principle is also entitled to this as the girl’s biological father – stirs up a lot of unprocessed grief from the past. Sonne wants to prevent Kees from coming near her niece at all costs. Through flashbacks (which are not always clearly demarcated as such, so keep an eye out) we see that Kees was once brought into the home of Hannah and Sonne (Georgina Verbaan), a madly in love mother, but soon shifted his attention from mother to teenage daughters. And now Sonne is afraid that her niece Lotte will also fall prey to this child molester. We see how Kees first takes over Hannah (Juna de Leeuw) with extra attention, presents and compliments and that he shifts his attention to Sonne, then still called Willemke (Pleun Nijhuis), when Hannah isn’t ‘exciting’ enough for him anymore. . Kees has never had to pay for his actions because the women of the family have been silent all these years.

Whereas in a novel the thoughts of the main character can be explored in depth, film offers less space for this. However, the makers of ‘Buiten is hetfeest’ often keep their characters silent and staring straight ahead. Remarkably enough, that works better with some characters than others. Verbaan turns the mother into an embittered woman marked by life, behind whose gray, hollow gaze hides an immeasurable feeling of guilt. Because she herself does not seem to know why she never intervened and could not protect her daughters, she prefers to remain silent. What’s on her mind? Verbaan is an actress who only seems to get better as she gets older, although the choice for 41-year-old Verbaan as mother of Hoes, who is barely fifteen years younger, is of course open to question, especially when you consider that Hannah is even slightly older. is then Sonne. In a cast full of young girls, who are not all equally strong, the experience of Verbaan, who convincingly portrays a broken woman, stands out. Hoes’s silence comes in significantly less hard, and then she also has a series of not too convincing lyrics to spoon up, which should reflect her deepest feelings, but unfortunately miss their target. The constant change of past and present, already mentioned, could have been sharpened, for example with a stylistic trick. What makes it even more confusing are the complex family connections that are not immediately clear. The many, sometimes still very young actresses are initially difficult to tell apart.

Among all those women, Eelco Smits is a convincing wolf in sheep’s clothing. Nesna only occasionally shows explicitly how stepfather Kees assaults his wife’s young daughters. Moments that should have a strong impact on the viewer, but that just don’t turn out in the right way. Of course, this theme is urgent and this story needs to be told. But the impact of the abuse is never made tangible, while that most probably must have been the intention of the makers. A more subtle approach that allows the viewer to get inside the characters’ heads, as in Arthur Japin’s novel, would undoubtedly have hit a lot harder. Now we get stuck in superficiality due to characters that are too distant, a lack of emotion and a confusing scenario. Fortunately, Verbaan manages to fascinate us as the mother who has not even been given a name by the writers, but who is the only one to demonstrate what an emotionally devastating impact guilt about child abuse can have on everyone involved.