Love in a Bottle (2021)

Directed by: Paula van der Oest | 80 minutes | drama, romance | Actors: Hannah Hoekstra, James Krishna Floyd

Hannah Hoekstra and James Krishna Floyd star in this love in lockdown composition by Paula van der Oest (including ‘Tonio’). Lucky and Miles briefly met at an airport, returning home to a world locked down due to COVID-19. The premise is love at first sight, a fact that is not easy to convey to a viewer anyway.

Before he realizes it, he witnesses image communication such as in Whatsapp, in which the two get to know each other. He likes to cook; she explains what’s on her t-shirt. She eats a pancake, he watches as she has an underpants fashion show. And so forth. The only obvious dramatic addition to watching is that you see one person’s visual reflex when the other disconnects.

It’s not that much different from the normal dating of young lovers. The dramatic setting threatens to quickly become boring, as if in a repetition of recognizable moves. Unless the director has something disruptive in store. The undersigned is easily bored, that must be said; for peers of the brash Dutch Lucky and the reserved Brit Miles it might be a less stolid experience.

The director’s observant attitude, natural to the creative process, is not easily translated into a normative viewing experience regarding millennials and their worries. It is also acted whether a larger audience is watching, which should not be – with a humorless sex scene as the low point. The breakfast scene that follows is a lot of fun.

At the end, Van der Oest seems to want to explain. However, the final verdict is that we see a completed online dating process, without much dramatic support. For the most part, this film could have been made for a Secret Service agent. Then give us ‘Das Leben der Anderen’, a film in which the eavesdropper of two lovers is himself the main character.