Tim’s parents start a hotel business on the coast. Their dream comes true, but Tim is less excited. Moving, a new school, new friends, hopefully: he is not sure what to expect. Next, he discovers a frozen man in the basement. When he comes to, it turns out to be a spy who had a thrilling adventure there thirty years ago. Together, they try to find out what happened back then, while new mysteries keep piling up.
What do you do if you want to keep reality at a distance? You put a camera in between, just like the boy that unrelentingly lets his camera run at his father’s funeral. His mother can order him to put the thing away as much as she wants, the son keeps capturing what his eyes don’t want to see and his heart doesn’t want to feel. In the process, the handheld perspective also represents the mourning of a child who’d obviously rather play than weep.
The parents of five sisters have been married for forty years; the daughters have gathered in the family beach house to make a video for them. The encounter is marked by many confrontations as well as cheerful moments. Reminiscent of the sweet children's poems that mother recited are countered by Elsschot's Marriage: 'He thought: I'll kill her and set light to the house...' It also turns out that father had once disappeared for eighteen months, a 'secret' that the daughters have different ideas about. Brittle, an intimate film version of a play written and performed by the same actresses, is about rivalry in a family, the right to silence, but also about the need for solidarity. At the Netherlands Film Festival in 1997 the Golden Calf for Best Actress was awarded to the five actresses together.
A Portuguese imigrant in Holland dies in an accident and is buried in Amsterdam. But his soul will not rest in peace until his body is carried back to Portugal.
When his wife Lydia commits suicide, succesful attorney Robert Havinck is freed from his unhappy marriage. Unfortunately, it turns out she took a complete stranger along with her, and a feeling of guilt and curiosity about her motives lead Havinck to team up with his fifteen-year old daughter to explore Lydia's final days.
The three very different men in this film have become friends out of their common dissatisfaction with their lives. Beard is now more or less a street person since his wife left him. Before that, he was a social worker. "Foureyes" is a nebbish science teacher, who can't get anyone to take him seriously -- certainly not his students. He seeks solace in the quiet of the stars, which he views in his telescope at night. Finally, Gerdo is a fellow who is a master of many trades, successful at almost everything he does, except in his own eyes. Each new challenge proves unsatisfying when met. The only thing he wants is the one thing he can't bring about: the return of his old girlfriend, who left him for some boring civil servant. He sees her everywhere, and images of her haunt him constantly. (allmovie.com)
