Lover or Loser (2009)

Directed by: Dave Schram | 100 minutes | drama, family | Actors: Gaite Jansen, Martijn Lakemeier, Ruud Feltkamp, ​​Claire Bender, Lucas Hamming, Afra Margeridon, Carlien van Dijken, Erik van Heijningen, Manuel Broekman, Carlijn van Zijtveld, Susan Visser, Thomas Acda

Hey, there’s another Carry Slee film adaptation! After ‘Keep off’, ‘Timboektoe’, and ‘Distraught’, ‘Lover of Loser’ has now also found its way to the silver screen. You just can’t go wrong, you would almost think, after the great success of the previous film adaptations, and the reputation of Carry Slee’s books, that they are written so cinematically. Is a screenwriter or director still needed? Yes, I do. In fact, Slee’s richly varied books in tone and content require a steady hand and a sharp eye. After all, this is not just some light-hearted children’s stories for in between. The earlier books and films were easy to watch and were great entertainment, but they also dealt with relatively heavy themes for the “genre” of youth films. Drug use, alcoholism, bereavement, are some of the serious issues that came up in the books (and their film adaptations). In ‘Lover of Loser’ there are also loverboys and hints of incest. To treat these subjects respectfully and in a balanced way, and also to ensure that the film does not become very heavy and that there are also funny and magical moments to be seen, is not an easy undertaking. But screenwriter Maria Peters and director Dave Schram have succeeded wonderfully in this.

The beginning of the film immediately surprises with a number of playful, romantic dream scenes edited one after the other, in which Mees, who tries to give himself an attitude when the girl of his dreams enters the print shop, fantasizes how he could or should behave in order to see the beautiful to conquer Eve. He keeps dreaming about a different scenario. First he puts his head upside down in the aquarium to cool down, allowing the viewer to see Eva through the water, where the air bubbles magically swirl through; a bit like Leonardo DiCaprio meeting Claire Danes at the aquarium in Baz Luhrmann’s ‘Romeo + Juliet’. Then again he spontaneously starts playing a song on his acoustic guitar. While not new to movies – ‘Wayne’s World’, ‘High Fidelity’ and many others preceded ‘Lover of Loser’ – it’s a fun way to play with the viewer’s expectations and set a dreamy tone. bring to the movie. The first shots of the film are interesting anyway. These are extreme close-ups of various parts of a printer, and of hands renewing the ink for this device. Then a set of eyes appears that peer into the shop from behind the device: it is an original, stimulating introduction of the character Mees, whose focus we get the impression that he will be the central character.

However, this does not appear to be the case. That is to say, Martijn Lakemeier, who plays Mees, certainly has a very big role in ‘Lover of Loser’, but the character that everything revolves around is Eva, played by Gaite Jansen. This promising young actress, who has played in series such as “Spangas” and “Flikken Maastricht”, unfortunately missed out on the previous audition days of the Carry Slee films, but this time it was a hit, and she plays the stars of heaven as the beautiful, intelligent, and at the same time feisty and insecure Eve. She knows how to credibly unite all these qualities with each other and this is a great advantage, given the serious theme of loverboys and their working methods. The film shows that you don’t have to be a stupid gosling, or because of unpopularity at school extra susceptible to compliments, to fall prey to the smart loverboys. Although Eva does say in the film itself that she can’t get any boyfriends, this is hard to believe given her appearance and appearance. It is unclear whether the makers really want to say something with this, but in any case the film shows that loverboys have a good radar for the mental state of a girl and that hardly anyone can resist an abundance of (positive) attention.

The loverboy in the film, the smooth Ricardo (Ruud Feltkamp), approaches Eva exactly at the moment when she is in desperate need. Just when she thinks she has nowhere to go, Ricardo is kind to her. He just gives her 50 euros for a hotel room, because she no longer wants to go home because of a possibly incestuous foster father. With the remark that she can of course sleep with him, but that he also understands that she will not do that so quickly because she does not know him. A good, sincere story, it seems, and solid proof of his integrity. So she goes home with him anyway. When he showers her the next day with attention and new clothes – à la ‘Pretty Woman’ – her resistance is completely broken. The film covers even more important points about the loverboy phenomenon. Not only is a loverboy initially just a sweet boy who gives a girl attention and doesn’t look like a dingy, scary boy, but once a girl is deep in a loverboy’s web and has been touching her body for a long time selling is for the effective pimp, even then there is often a strong bond with him, which prevents the girl from facing reality; namely the reality that he doesn’t care about her at all and is just exploiting her. It turns out that an “ex” of Ricardo still loves him, even though she is aware of all his pranks and she herself has become a victim of this. It’s a hard-to-understand connection that somehow resembles the Stockholm Syndrome in which the hostage bonds with his hostage-taker.

Although this is a children’s or youth film, the makers do not shy away from disturbing scenes and situations and viewers of all ages will hold their breath and feel a knot in their stomach when Eva enters, for example, the special house where she has to have dirty men. to please; when she walks through the main hall, where scantily clad girls perform erotic dances, and enters the dormitory, where many girls made up and in lingerie lie, looking gloomy and already resigned to their terrible fate. They are intense scenes, and also the part in the car on the way there, in which Eva finds out what kind of person Ricardo is and what awaits her, is exciting. However, it remains within the limits of what a child can handle or should see. So when Ricardo is intimidated by a bunch of truckers, the swear words remain quite tame, with the men just pushing the car a bit to scare him. But still, the message gets across: this is not allowed and the boy is an inhuman.

Although the film is quite grim at times, this tone is never held for too long. It doesn’t take long before a song is sung again, a guitar beaten – just like Audrey Hepburn in ‘Roman Holiday’ – or a joke is made. The humor is sometimes quite dry and witty. When Mees enters a coffee shop looking for Ricardo and the clerk asks what he wants to order, Mees simply says “a coffee”. That alone is fun. Then comes the wise-cracking, apparently sarcastic answer: “Slice of cake with that?”. But he is serious, because the next shot from the counter reveals a saucer with “grandma’s space cake”, which Mees can feast on. The film is also brightened up every now and then by a musical intermezzo by none other than actor Martijn Lakemeier himself, who plays the guitar and sings, providing the film with extra charm and authenticity. Even Gaite Jansen does her bit, in a cute scene with Martijn. Moments like these make the film almost turn into a fairy tale. A serious fairy tale, yes, but the magic is undeniable.

The casting is generally excellent. In addition to a fine Gaite Jansen, Martijn Lakemeier shows after ‘War Winter’ once again how effortless acting seems to go for him, and Ruud Feltkamp, ​​who plays Nout in it, who is mainly known from “Good Times, Bad Times” – also puts on a convincingly charming rogue down, with only some thick accents at the end. Some supporting roles – such as some skate buddies of Eva’s girlfriend Julia – are less convincing, but luckily most of the time is taken up by the three protagonists. The story is sometimes a bit short-sighted – Eva easily gives up her cell phone, and Ricardo shows his true nature very quickly, and the central misunderstanding of the mistaken identity in the film is somewhat silly – but the film also needs to speed up. and the most important messages need to be covered, and time is limited. As in the Italian family epic ‘La Meglio Gioventú’, six hours cannot be allotted to allow everything to take place as realistically as possible. As a widely accessible youth film with humor, action, tension and social drama, ‘Lover of Loser’ is very successful.