Dir: Patrice Toye | Greet Verstraete, Line Pillet, Tijmen Govaerts, Dominique Van Malder | Drama, Belgium 99′
Flemish director Patrice Toye adapts Inge Schilperoord’s book to create a distinctive arthouse psychodrama that veers from vaguely clinical to stylishly dreamlike in its convincing and counterintuitive study of sexual obsession.
Belgian indies Bullhead, Allelujuia and most recently Adoration see their main characters struggle with physical or emotional conflicts. And Muidhond does this with calmness serenity Toye gracefully mastering her material in a film whose troubled waters run deep only occasionally breaking the limpid surface of the sunlit domestic settings and lowland landscapes of Holland’s white sandy coast.
Tijmen Govaerts turns in an impressively subtle and deeply affecting performance as the gentle Jonathan, a complex, wistful and outwardly placid young man who is deeply troubled and has recently returned from a spell in prison – flashbacks show him taking a brutal beating from the disapproving inmates – apparently there was not enough evidence to commit him longterm for pedophilia. He channels his troubled psyche into rescuing a flaying Muidhond carp which he rescues from the shallows “you’re going to get better… and so will I”, before returning to his job at a fish factory in Schependijk, a lock complex in the Dutch city of Terneuzen.
But feelings for his pre-teen neighbour Elke will not go away despite intensive sessions in CBT with a doctor barely older than himself. Jonathan’s obsession grows scene by scene his gnawing longing for her burgeons into an uncontrollable infatuation that haunts him day and night. Naturally Elke is completely carefree and innocent in her teasing friendship with the 25 year old yet grows increasingly tuned in to his febrile behaviour. Days in the fish factory see Jonathan trying to hold down his menial job while being at the constant receiving end of physical abuse from more or less anybody in his small-minded community – at one point he is stared down by his factory colleague and showered by bucket of putrid fish – the impact of all this on Jonathan’s fragile state of mind is harrowing to watch and sensitively captured in Richard Van Ossterhout’s moody camerawork. Attempts to date a girl from the fish factory fall flat. But clearly he is not the only abused character in the softly meadowed backwater. Elke herself is recovering from some kind of childhood abuse and taunts Jonathan with the vestiges of this troubled past adding a toxic twist to their doomed yet strangely companionable relationship.
Despite the nature of his emotional damage Toye makes us root for Jonathan and we feel for his pain largely due to his obvious contrition and desperate fear of recidivism which is palpable Govaerts’ extraordinary piece of acting. A nimble handheld camera adds to the film’s trippy aquamarine aesthetic and a timidly plaintive score brings a note of hope to Jonathan’s own situation despite what transpires in the final depressing segment, Toye avoiding a happy ending but being realistic about the facts of this condition. Jonathan emerges a decent character with a terrible affliction as he returns the flourishing carp to its watery home. A creature given a second chance in life, from another who deserves one of his own. MT
ROTTERDAM INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 2020