David O'ConnellBlood Brothers (Bloedbroeders)
May 20th 2009 03:33
Based on a true story, this 2008 Dutch film recounts the final months of an unlikely teenage alliance that eventually led to murder. Director Arno Dierickx’s film is devoid of any real flair or even a complex, gripping narrative though it does earn credit for disobeying the general rule of stretching stereotypes beyond believability for the sake of cheap entertainment.
In the 1960’s a young boy from a working class family, Simon (Erik Van Heijningen), falls in with a pair of wealthy brothers from his school, Arnout (Matthijs van de Sande Bakhuyzen) and Diederick (Daan van Dijsseldonk). They make fun of Simon though without any real malice, more as a means of breaking up the drudgery of their sedate lives lounging around the grounds of their enormous villa where their dotty mother seems to double as their servant. Much time is also spent listening to American pop records, drinking tall iced drinks or blithely ignoring Arnout’s pretty but vacuous girlfriend Frederique (Carolien Spoor).
When an acquaintance of Simon’s, a pipsqueak 14 year old wannabe thug, Ronnie (Sander van Amsterdam), enters the scene, the brothers are horrified by his aggression at first. Ronnie draws blood by smashing his head through a window to impress them and having rarely encountered such a colourful character cocooned within their elitist existence, the brothers are soon holding fast to his coattails. The rebellious quartet get into all manner of mostly harmless strife, carrying out various juvenile pranks, but when Ronnie goes too far in stealing a motorbike, his past comes back to haunt him.
Needing to find a hideaway after evading the police he calls upon the brothers for help, and they willingly stow him away in their attic. Before long they want to see the back of him however, the initial sense of secretive adventure soon evaporating, but ejecting him from their home is easier said than done. Preying on their guilt and using half-hearted blackmail threats he manages to convince them to keep him there. After more than a month however, Simon - who's become like a surrogate family member - and the brothers are thoroughly sick of poor Ronnie, treating him worse than a dog. When plans of sneaking him over the border come to naught, their minds then turn to darker thoughts of how the meddlesome pest might be purged from their lives.
It’s hard to get overly enthused about Dierickx’s unremarkable film which plods along at an even pace without ever gathering any real momentum. The flash-forward that opens the film telegraphs the path this small-scale drama is inevitably headed down so any sense of mystery is mostly extinguished from the start.
The young boys are excellent, it must be said, and the even-handedness of their portrayal by screenwriters Bert Bouma and Jan Bernard Bussemaker deserves recognition. Simon, though viewed as a weak link by the brothers, is shown as possessing strengths the others don’t, whilst Arnout, the good-looking, arrogant and dominant sibling is exposed in many scenes as being equally vulnerable as Simon and his nerdy brother.
This mildly interesting diversion is worth a look, the true story angle behind it generating some intrigue, but the lack of any extreme subject matter diminishes its impact overall. The matter-of-fact nature of the violence is in keeping with the low-key tone and admittedly the most significant scene in the film is a decidedly chilling one. Against that, peripheral strands like Arnout's latent homosexuality are glazed over, whilst the constant use of 60’s American pop is grating too, feeling more and more out of place in its irritating insistence.
In the 1960’s a young boy from a working class family, Simon (Erik Van Heijningen), falls in with a pair of wealthy brothers from his school, Arnout (Matthijs van de Sande Bakhuyzen) and Diederick (Daan van Dijsseldonk). They make fun of Simon though without any real malice, more as a means of breaking up the drudgery of their sedate lives lounging around the grounds of their enormous villa where their dotty mother seems to double as their servant. Much time is also spent listening to American pop records, drinking tall iced drinks or blithely ignoring Arnout’s pretty but vacuous girlfriend Frederique (Carolien Spoor).
When an acquaintance of Simon’s, a pipsqueak 14 year old wannabe thug, Ronnie (Sander van Amsterdam), enters the scene, the brothers are horrified by his aggression at first. Ronnie draws blood by smashing his head through a window to impress them and having rarely encountered such a colourful character cocooned within their elitist existence, the brothers are soon holding fast to his coattails. The rebellious quartet get into all manner of mostly harmless strife, carrying out various juvenile pranks, but when Ronnie goes too far in stealing a motorbike, his past comes back to haunt him.
Needing to find a hideaway after evading the police he calls upon the brothers for help, and they willingly stow him away in their attic. Before long they want to see the back of him however, the initial sense of secretive adventure soon evaporating, but ejecting him from their home is easier said than done. Preying on their guilt and using half-hearted blackmail threats he manages to convince them to keep him there. After more than a month however, Simon - who's become like a surrogate family member - and the brothers are thoroughly sick of poor Ronnie, treating him worse than a dog. When plans of sneaking him over the border come to naught, their minds then turn to darker thoughts of how the meddlesome pest might be purged from their lives.
Arnout (Matthijs van de Sande Bakhuyzen) Simon (Erik Van Heijningen) and Diederick (Daan van Dijsseldonk) enjoying time away from their 'captive'!
It’s hard to get overly enthused about Dierickx’s unremarkable film which plods along at an even pace without ever gathering any real momentum. The flash-forward that opens the film telegraphs the path this small-scale drama is inevitably headed down so any sense of mystery is mostly extinguished from the start.
The young boys are excellent, it must be said, and the even-handedness of their portrayal by screenwriters Bert Bouma and Jan Bernard Bussemaker deserves recognition. Simon, though viewed as a weak link by the brothers, is shown as possessing strengths the others don’t, whilst Arnout, the good-looking, arrogant and dominant sibling is exposed in many scenes as being equally vulnerable as Simon and his nerdy brother.
This mildly interesting diversion is worth a look, the true story angle behind it generating some intrigue, but the lack of any extreme subject matter diminishes its impact overall. The matter-of-fact nature of the violence is in keeping with the low-key tone and admittedly the most significant scene in the film is a decidedly chilling one. Against that, peripheral strands like Arnout's latent homosexuality are glazed over, whilst the constant use of 60’s American pop is grating too, feeling more and more out of place in its irritating insistence.
Ronnie (Sander van Amsterdam) getting fitted up for a passport photo
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