Review: Winckel 213 (2011)

Director: Jan Scholte | 33 minutes | documentary

Anyone who is a bit at home in the Amsterdam Rivierenbuurt has had his or her eye on it. Until recently, there was a shop on the Ceintuurbaan that cannot be compared with anything else: mainly buttons, ribbons and zippers were sold by a bunch of elderly ladies for almost pre-war prices. In addition to these items, you could go here for an old-fashioned shopping experience, where you can still easily go through the state of the world with a saleswoman and where nothing had changed since the 1950s. And despite the low prices, the store still provided a nice addition to the pension of the ladies, who were led by Corrie van Dijk.

It has not always been a good thing for Corrie in life, but she is the last person to give up. Unfortunately, at the beginning of the film, the end of the shop is in sight: the rent has skyrocketed and is no longer available. The store is closing, much to the sadness of the regular customers and the employees. The farewell to the store has been beautifully portrayed by director Jan Scholte: interviews with the striking, at times hilarious women who worked in the store are interspersed with images of the emptying of the store. The face of those women, who are well over seventy, stoically demolishing all the furniture and all the baseboards from the walls is a sight to behold.

At the end, what remains is especially emotional when you see an era coming to an end, and a group of elderly women lose their main meaning in life. It still offers some consolation that the women and their shop have been immortalized so beautifully with this film in all their idiosyncrasies, intransigence and humor. The shop may have disappeared, but it lives on beautifully on film.