It Hurts So Much (2017)

Directed by: Heleen van Royen | 87 minutes | documentary | With: Heleen van Royen, Margreet Breed

For a year, author Heleen van Royen in ‘It hurts so much’ provides an intimate glimpse into the life of a parent with early vascular dementia. Her mother Margreet has reached the age of 84, utters her mantra “Poede-poede-poeste-it-does-so-hurt” all day long, still lives independently in a maisonette, a living situation that Heleen has looked at with suspicion.

The time has come to think in appropriate solutions. Heleen wants to set herself up as a carer. The bull is taken by the horns and a brand new residential unit is placed in the leafy garden of her Hilversum villa with all the luxury per square meter. Margreet is skeptical and stubborn. She considers the well-being of her bookcase just as more important.

As with many things, it is a matter of getting used to and Margreet experiences the benefits of the warm informal care. She seems to be slowly finding her niche in her tiny house. She sits comfortably with her daughter in the garden in the summer sun and they test the telephone line. This makes for a moving conversation as they sit side by side,

When Margreet falls out of bed one night and hurts her newly operated hip, the question is whether she can return to her garden palace. A long road of rehabilitation, stubbornness, openness, disappointment and making euthanasia a topic of discussion seems to have been taken.

‘It hurts so much’ is rightly a poignant portrayal of dementia. With many touching moments such as Margreet reacting with childish enthusiasm to a sleepover, are interspersed with the harsh reality of aging and physical adversity.

This documentary has not always been well received. The coat rack about Heleen’s exhibitionistic disposition and voyeurism is often used by opponents and this documentary has been labeled as nauseating and commercial exploitation of her mother. Wrongly… because it is always documented with taste and class, because everyone can imagine what this mental and physical battle against decay will look like. Heleen tries to paint an honest, but not too heavy picture by interweaving light-hearted humor in the portrait. The love for her mother predominates without a doubt.

In the light of the hit series ‘The diary of Hendrik Groen’, you feel for the good intentions of authorities and the conflict in which children of parents with dementia find themselves. But just like in Hendrik’s musty beige nursing home, the desolation of being elderly seeps through at many moments. The only difference is that this story is not played by healthy vital actors. Margeet moves in her own bold way and she does it – without probably realizing it herself – with verve.