Dir: Mimi Cave | Cast: Nicole Kidman, Matthew Macfadyen, Jude Hill, Gael García Bernal | US Comedy drama 108′
Andrew Sodroski
A kitschy toy-town love story that seems trite to begin with. But Martin Macfadyen and Nicole Kidman soon make it compulsive despite all the absurdity.
Kidman is Nancy Vandergroot (Nicole Kidman), a naive housewife and teacher with too much time on her hands and a tendency to jump to conclusions. This lack of a meaningful existence, leaves ‘Nan’ clinging to her son Harry (Hill) and the small-town agenda in Holland, Michigan (the tulip festival looms large in her diary). On VoiceOver, Nancy expresses deep contentment in this picture-postcard lakeside town where she has founded a family and ultimate satisfaction. Yet scratch the glossy surface and we discover a deeply unhappy, frustrated woman in denial of her vacuous marriage to Alan Partridge-style husband Fred (MacFadyen) the town’s (on the face of it) respectable optician.
Searching for a missing earring one day in her twee suburban home, Nan jumps to the conclusion that her son’s tutor (Sennott) is responsible, and gives the poor girl her marching orders. Fred then announces another trip ‘for work reasons’ and Nancy imagines an affair, and she does the following week. Recruiting her work colleague Dave (a convincing Gael Bernal) the two soon-to- be lovers investigate Fred’s agenda. What they eventually discover is mind-blowing.
Script-writer Andrew Sodroski comes up with a compelling but confused comedy mystery about female loneliness and loss of agency with an ultimate reveal that completely derails the carefully concocted slow-burn suspense, turning Holland into an absurdist, sensationalist and non-sensical thriller.
Cave directs in ‘too good to be true’ technicolor that screams ‘something is wrong’. Kidman gives a febrile turn as the insecure Nancy. She is not unlike ‘Romy’ the character she played in Babygirl who is forced to acknowledge and submit to unwelcome and illicit desires. This isolated woman’s state of mind in Holland’ss soulless backwater should actually be the crux of the narrative; far more worthy of exploration than her husband’s, albeit outlandish, activities which erroneously steal the thunder.
Forced to surrender to her feelings for Dave, Nancy finds it uncomfortable to front up to the sham of her public and private persona and this dichotomy is where the film should lead us. And for a time Sodroski certainy heads in this direction; the obsessed Nancy experiencing nightmares about her son’s wellbeing as she plunges into an affair with the honest and well-meaning Dave.
Of course, she has no intention of pursuing this in any meaningful way and Dop Pawel Pogorzelski’s feverish visuals and Alex Somers’ edgy score underline the tension. Nancy has hinted at a backstory, early on, but her character is never explored further and so we are left empty-handed and disappointed. Instead we’re plunged into a cop-out involving Fred. Rather a waste for the talents of Kidman, Bernal and MacFadyen. Ultimately not even they can make sense of this implausible film with more potholes than the A13. @MeredithTaylor
SXSW ahead of its March 27 release on Prime Video,