Guernsey (2005)

Directed by: Nanouk Leopold | 90 minutes | drama | Actors: Fedja van Huêt, Maria Kraakman, Johanna ter Steege, Frank Vercruyssen, Hans Croiset, Nathalie Alonso Casale, Monica Dolan, Aurélia Petit, Skip Goeree, Mabel Gonzâlez, David Veenhof, Ties Veenhof, Vincent Moes, Sharrif Korver

The Dutch feature film ‘Guernsey’ is about Anna, a young woman who loses faith in the world around her after the suicide of a colleague. After that unexpected suicide, Anna begins to look at her own environment with new eyes. Are the people around her really the people she thought she knew? Or are things also happening outside her field of vision? Since she had had a light conversation with this regretted colleague shortly before her suicide, Anna also lost her confidence in verbal communication. What are you supposed to do with words if you can no longer understand the world at all?

Ingredients for fascinating movie house food, albeit a bit on the heavy side. In addition, director Nanouk Leopold has worked completely uncompromisingly. She makes no effort to make it easy for the viewer, let alone to please him. The audience can find out for themselves how the mutual relationships work and what drives the main characters. There is hardly any communication, except on an elementary, physical level. And there is looking, a lot of looking.

All this could have resulted in a film that can be interpreted in a hundred different ways, but ‘Guernsey’ certainly did not become such a film. Anyone who pays attention will understand exactly how things work and will not only understand the characters but also understand a little more about their background. And whoever manages to empathize with those characters will eventually be rewarded with scenes that are exceptionally gripping in all their simplicity.

The fact that ‘Guernsey’ has not become a masterpiece is mainly due to the dialogues, oh irony. The words often come out a bit unhappy and are sometimes not very realistic. Besides that, a tiny bit of air certainly wouldn’t have hurt the film. That does not alter the fact that ‘Guernsey’ has become one hell of a film. And it is to be hoped that we will hear much, much more from Nanouk Leopold. And above all, go see.