Feature film
Een dagje naar het strand
Theo van Gogh · 1984
Synopsis
Bernd, whom drink has cut off from everything, lives without work and without a schedule. One rainy, hungover morning, he goes to fetch his daughter Walijne, who is slightly disabled and lives with her mother Medusa and her mother's new partner, to take her to spend the day in Scheveningen. On the seafront, he wants to be a good father, they come across strange people, and each stop gives him a new occasion to drink.
Context
The film adapts the book that Heere Heeresma had published in 1962, already brought to the screen in 1970 by Simon Hesera, from a screenplay on which Roman Polański had worked. It is its director's second feature film, who entrusted the commentary to the author of the book himself: his voice, with the heavy irony that marks all his narratives, gives the film its tone. Cas Enklaar plays the father, chosen, the director said, for his thirsty vulture's head; the music is by Willem van Ekeren.
Who it is for
About an hour and a half in Dutch, with a voice commenting from start to finish. One should know that nothing is resolved in it and that the humour is that of a man going under.
Prizes and reception
Warm reception from the press on its release; the film can today be watched online on the platform of the Dutch film archive.