170Hz (2011)

Directed by: Joost van Ginkel | 85 minutes | drama | Actors: Gaite Jansen, Michael Muller, Eva van Heijningen, Hugo Haenen, Ariane Schluter, Porgy Franssen, Robert de Hoog

Somewhere in ‘170 Hz’ Nick (Michael Muller) and Evy (Gaite Janssen), madly in love, throw cans of paint over each other’s naked bodies. In immaculate slow-motion (touching the slow video art of Bill Viola), red rags of paint turn into mouth-watering dragon’s tongues. It’s a scene that can be lifted out of the story like a slide – without missing anything – but which you wouldn’t want to miss as a viewing experience. ‘170 Hz’ demands the attention of the eye like a peacock’s tail. Nick and Evy’s childhood homes are respectively a thatched-roof villa with a glass/steel combination that resembles a set piece from the ‘Thunderbirds’ series. Nick himself resides in the wreckage of a city bus that rubs against the concrete pillars of a viaduct in boundless no man’s land. And then their bodies. Maybe Michael Muller’s sinewy, tawny body isn’t the standard on the catwalk; here it is intriguing. Like a cat it plays with Gaite Janssen’s unspoilt curves. In touch and movement is all the language they possess, because Nick and Evy are deaf.

The story of ‘170 Hz’ is quite simple and certainly classic within film history. Nick is the rebellious young adult motorcycle mouse, completely estranged from his parents. His hair hangs constantly in front of his eyes, as if to prove that his deafness doesn’t bother him at all. Though it might as well emphasize its isolation. Evy is the budding virgin, looking for a way to break out of the protective nutshell her father in particular has erected. They fall in love, her father doesn’t like it. Love and the Generation Gap: They’re Leaving. They think it will take them five months to forge an inextricable bond in her belly. They spend five months in and around an abandoned submarine. It is a place where, as in the entire film, silence reigns. And where time seems to stand still. But just like that time, and what happens in it, when a curse hangs over almost all puppy loves, so does ‘170 Hz’. Minute after minute, Nick’s prickly unpredictability and self-tormenting affection prove less indicative of his youthfulness and more revealing of his being. It doesn’t make him more attractive, but, again, more intriguing. Certainly compared to Evy’s growing emotional fortitude.

‘170 Hz’ is the first feature film written and directed by Joost van Ginkel. Perhaps that explains the sometimes somewhat forced way in which the story develops into, ultimately, a melodrama of grand gestures (better: one grand gesture). When Evy’s father (Hugo Haenen) slaps her in anger, he is placed very neatly in Nick’s sight, so that he can observe the injustice unhindered. Dads have done it here anyway, although afterwards you still don’t understand what Nick’s problem is, apart from the fact that dad (Porgy Franssen) is apparently rich and gets a kick out of classic Mercedes. The imaginative lighting also sometimes turns over-enthusiastically. When Evy and Nick sail across the water in the pitch dark, they are lit up like angels. While there is no light to be seen.

But whoever attributes these scratches to inexperience must also attribute the beauty of the film to them. ‘170 Hz’ manages to immerse you in the perspective of the deaf person in an impressively convincing way. The film takes you like a submarine into an unknown world, especially through the editing; the continuous clashing and merging, overflowing and fanning out of image and sound, light and dark, stillness and emotion. There you recognize the hand of someone with innate experience.