A retro atmosphere and a secret hidden in a quiet little town à la Twin Peaks, dark humor à la Fargo and a Nicole Kidman straight out of Desperate Housewives, the first steps of Holland suggested a thriller that swallowed its references to spit out its Mister Cocktail version with the desire to want.
The first notes of the film by Mimi Cave, whose aesthetic was revealed in Fresh, suggested that we would get our money's worth, among the inhabitants of Holland, a town in the American Midwest whose culture comes from the Netherlands. Windmills, traditional outfits, and the braces-clad smiles of little blond heads—thrillers know this kind of atmosphere is fertile ground for mysteries, little secrets, and paranoia. In short, the ideal ground for a great story to blossom.
We follow Nancy Vandergroot (Nicole Kidman), a teacher, mother, and model wife. Suspecting her husband (Matthew Macfadyen) of infidelity following seminars that are a little too regular for her liking, she investigates him with her colleague Dave (Gael Garcia Bernal). They are not ready for what they are about to discover.
Holland's Tom of Promises
Appearances are at the heart of the feature film, which opens with an event that sets the tone. Nancy accuses her son's babysitter, Candy (Rachel Sennott in a cameo) of stealing an earring. Lies and truth immediately drive the story, but the banality of the act and the lack of evidence suggest that Nancy is mainly trying to spice up her daily life. Holland manages to immediately pique curiosity about what happens next. In a setting too timeless to be real, surrounded by characters with a confusing routine, we begin to look for the future little beast. Is the town fake, like The Truman Show? Is Nancy's obsession justified, or is she looking for a non-existent plot, like The Game? Cave's long shots of the miniature town built by her husband leave a certain unease; Something is going to go wrong, but what? Something sounds wrong, but what? The film's proposition is beautiful, that of making us believe that we must expect everything, especially the unexpected.
With Holland, change is not now
The director and her cinematographer do their best to keep us in this fog, but their talent is unfortunately at the service of a script that is taking on water from all sides. As if it had gone straight from a first draft to the filming phase without going through any rewriting. For an hour, we witness Nancy and Dave in their investigation, which seems to lead nowhere except to reveal their own desires, their own flaws. We go around in circles, and far too many elements are set up to never be used later. Useless chatter in the construction of the protagonists, filler scenes... the story has pulled out all the stops and is sweating hard right up to its central twist.
A revelation that makes you laugh or sigh, as it falls short of expectations and seems to surprise the film itself. No one seems ready for the second phase of the plot, neither the cast nor the crew, and there's a sort of wind of panic blowing through the mill. Holland was marking time, now he's running in a direction that doesn't suit him. Until now, we could have hoped for a surprising twist, but we finally have to put up with a lazy twist that strings together clichéd passages. The first part of the film ended up being boring, the second is immediately a failure.
All the previously interesting elements never come to fruition, and no promise is kept. The city itself, whose Dutch landscape seemed so crucial to the story's plot, could have been replaced by any other city. Especially since everything that could have revolved around it, like the latent racism of its community or the time period of the story—the early 2000s—will only be the subject of one scene, two at most, and then it's forgotten. The main person involved in the affair is poor Gael Garcia Bernal. His role is at the center of several subplots to the point where he could almost become the essential element of the story. Yet, he is swept under the rug as soon as the story moves further, despite the fact... that he is still involved. This is a perfect example of a film that tries to chase several hares at once and ends up coming away empty-handed.
Kidman is swimming in a film with big boots
We wonder what Nicole Kidman is doing in this mess, she who remains the only good reason to last the 105 minutes of the film. No one will blame her for not investing herself and she plays the different facets of Nancy with a certain delight. In a project that multiplies genres, she manages to embody them all, going from serious paranoia to naive candor in a fraction of a second, from a tense nightmare to the look of an amused child watching a scene from Mrs. Doubtfire. She masters all the scenes around a heroine who is nevertheless poorly written, like the rest. Kidman lives up to all his roles, it's a shame that not all his roles live up to him.
Is Holland a failed film? Yes, but we'll say that it's above all a frustrating film, because taken separately, through its atmosphere, its casting, parts of its script, its director, it had all the elements to, if not to make something great, at least highly appreciable. At the end, we have the feeling of having seen a paraplegic trying to operate on a brain tumor with a screwdriver. As it is, we have the impression of a production that had to be done and not that it could be. Holland is a boring and banal mess, both successively, jumping on the shoulders of its main star screaming "come what may".
0 Comments