Gave it two stars for the beautiful costumes and locations, but as a whole the movie was very disappointing. As a Dutchman I'm used to never watch Dutch movies because they're usually crap. I had better expectations this time because Michiel van Erp usually makes good (television) productions.
To sum things up:
- The dialogues are not convincing, it sounds more like stage actors reading lines
- Little / no chemistry between the actors
- Plot line so thin it's embarrassing
- Story doesn't 'unfold', it's just the same thing repeating itself over and over.
- Historical inaccuracy: it's the 18th century and some things just don't make sense, the way people behave and talk to each other, etc.
I'm guessing they went for English instead of Dutch to try to get a bigger audience, which is OK, but the overall feeling I get is it is 'too Dutch'. Dutch movies aren't usually very good, I never understand why, probably because there's just a very small audience for them, and that audience isn't really very critical. The result is that Dutch producers are used to always getting 'wonderful' reviews for things that are totally crap.
In the end watching it became agonizing, my friend and I were almost desperate at the end of the 1:50 hrs. As nothing seemed to unfold in the movie. I snoozed off a couple of times and don't seem to really have missed anything.
