Lynn (2009)

Directed by: Margot Schaap | 40 minutes | drama, short film | Actors: Sietske van der Meij, Michaël Bloos, Ezra Mol, Elsie de Brauw, Vincent Croiset, Kiki van Deursen, Eva Smid, Madelon Bresser, Sin-Mee Choy, Raven van Waijen, Hazel van Waijen, Wieger Windhorst, Hans Mulder, Alexandra Duvenkot, Thijs Havens

Lynn is twenty, has divorced parents, with whom she gets along well. She has a boyfriend, Stefan, looks good and is nice to her little (half) sister Floortje. She studies psychology in Amsterdam and has nice friends. What’s going on with Lynn? Nothing really, but the short film dedicated to her would like us to believe otherwise. The film follows Lynn for a few days and we often see her cycling back and forth, chatting with a friend, with an acquaintance she meets in the bookshop, on the phone, going out, taking a step lesson, taking care of Floortje, who she school and pick up, talking to her parents, just those normal things that fill the days of so many people.

Most notable in the film is the mother duck with little ones that Lynn encounters in Stefan’s stairwell. She’s a little tipsy after a night out, sure, but the public sees them too, so they must be real. It is somewhat reminiscent of Tony Soprano, for whom a similar encounter with a duck in his swimming pool prompted a visit to the psychiatrist, but Lynn is not that confused. Or is it? Every now and then we see life through her eyes and then it turns out that something is bothering her after all. In any case, she thinks about herself: she looks melancholy at photos from the past in which she looks cheerful, both at her mother’s home and with her friend, she seems to pass judgment on passers-by.

You could label ‘Lynn’ as a boring movie. After all, nothing startling happens, it is only a record of a few days in the life of an ordinary Dutch young woman. She does not make radical decisions, does not come to an enlightening insight and does not experience anything drastic. But instead of boring, it might be better to call the film subtle. It is a pity that the makers have gone too far in their subtlety; the message that director/screenwriter Margot Schaap and screenwriter Bastiaan Kroeger have put in the film is hidden too deeply. Despite that, ‘Lynn’, which was made as part of One Night Stand 4, isn’t a bad movie; the actors behave naturally, the camera work is perfectly fine, it is just that afterwards the viewing experience does not appear to differ much from sitting in public transport and observing people.