R.U. There (2010)

Directed by: David Verbeek | 90 minutes | drama | Actors: Stijn Koomen, Huan-Ru Ke, Tom De Hoog, Phi Nguyen, Pavio Bilak, David Eugene Callegari, David Davis, Robert Samudion

A hip fact, of this time and one that far exceeds national borders. That’s how we like to see it. Because in one way or another, what remains within the Netherlands is usually less interesting. Maybe it’s getting too close, or it’s just not exotic enough. After all, film should take you to another world. Now ‘RU There’ is about a Dutchman, but the makers cleverly take us through his ‘profession’ to exotic, but also mainly metropolitan Asia and of course to the virtual world of games and Second Life. How different do you want it to be? ‘Profession’ is in quotation marks, because it is not known to most people that there are more and more professional gamers, some of whom are Dutchmen among the world’s best.

‘RU There’ offers some insight into their gamer life at the beginning, in which they blend in like a football player with his football. In Asia, these gamers enjoy quite a bit of prestige. They make huge sums of money at events that attract fans en masse to watch their heroes play live games on mega-sized screens, sort of like showing an improvised cinema film. Yet in the first, somewhat slow half hour, director Verbeek wants us to believe that a gamer’s life is not a bed of roses.

Most of the games are quite violent and look more and more realistic. There have of course been heated discussions about this for a long time: does this affect the gamer, all that killing and without consequences? When the Wii, the XBox or Playstation goes out, real life starts again and the gamer takes his (lack of) morals from the game into the outside world. Or is he perfectly capable of separating reality from virtual fantasy? It seems to make us apathetic. Director Verbeek responds nicely to this. He allows the virtual world and the real world to flow effortlessly, as we do more and more often, for example with personal communication (Hyves, Twitter, internet dating, et cetera).

The result is a film that, as a given, fits in well with contemporary reality, in which we hide more and more in the virtual and outside our emotions seem to fade. But yes, a film does need emotion and that is, just like the facial expressions of the characters in Second Life, sometimes difficult to find. Our lives are so connected to the digital. For example, who can still function without a computer (and we’re not just talking about PCs)? With that line and the accompanying design, Verbeek seems to be aiming at a younger audience, but the pace and the elaboration suggest a more mature target group, which does not have to have everything pre-chewed. For example, we get little literal information about the feelings and motives of the main characters.

That ‘information’ is much more hidden in the images and the atmosphere, the strong sides. Verbeek is a Dutch filmmaker to keep an eye on. His film consists largely of in-game material, which is quite daring. He cannot be denied idiosyncrasy, especially when it comes to form and atmosphere. He also confirmed this with his earlier film ‘Shanghai Trance’ (also in Asia, this time China), although that film did not receive too much appreciation.

‘RU There’ was selected in Cannes for the Un Certain Regard program, where he did not emerge as the winner. Perhaps because of great competition or simply because people have not fully understood it. Yet there is more in it for those who look a little further. Because for the discerning listener, atmosphere and images do their job again, although at the same time they also and above all betray a fascination for Asia and China/Taiwan in particular. Furthermore, we sometimes taste something of Wong Kar Wai, or of Sophia Coppola’s ‘Lost in Translation’, but that is only for a short time. Actually, we mainly taste David Verbeek, who has not yet delivered his greatest masterpiece, but who at least remains faithful to his own style.