I Don’t Wanna Dance (2021)

Directed by: Flynn Von Kleist | 89 minutes | drama | Actors: Yfendo van Praag, Romana Vrede, Eliyah de Randamie, Daniël Kolf, Chardonnay Vermeer, Sean William Bogaers, Marco Eradus, Trinity Jade O’Brien, Mike Reus, Diyah Salem, Ergun Simsek, Michel Sminia, Lilith Vermeulen, Benjamin Vlijt, Aisa Winter

‘I Don’t Wanna Dance’ is a top notch Dutch docudrama. In your face, and as is often the case with youth subjects, nothing obscures. How do you do that? Only with good actors. Joey (Van Praag) is a well-meaning teenager, living with a borderline mother (Vrede). Immature quarrels, money problems, substance abuse and of course a certain good will are the order of the day. Like Joey’s wish to lead a normal teenage life, a wish that often leans much more toward normalcy than toward flight. The latter knows the blue, but responsible Joey all too well from his mother.

The result is an excellently acted, situationally oriented docudrama. It is a pleasure to watch Romana Vrede and the amateur actor Yfendo van Praag. Vrede is a stage actress with extensive experience and that fits well; it may be the case that both protagonists can draw on their personal lives. Mission accomplished? ‘I Don’t Wanna Dance’ has a good tension, without any decisive plot developments. The matter is shown directly but respectfully; fifteen-year-old Joey has a budding adolescent love, but that has rightly remained on the sidelines.

Then what? The conscious choice for a recognizable family situation with well-known aspects such as parents who do not take good care of their children and kind youth care consultants, makes the film more suitable for screening in secondary schools than for an audience that would have liked to see it a little more raw. Maybe a missed opportunity, maybe not. Dutch film operates in a certain circuit that makes this type of production possible. That in itself is a good principle. Keep it like that. And a mother who prefers coercive love over the love of her children, isn’t that raw enough?