Feature film
Abel
Alex van Warmerdam · 1986
Synopsis
Abel is thirty-one and has not stepped through the door of his parents' house in years. He watches the world through binoculars, knows a great deal about life in the Soviet Union, sets his father against his mother and cuts flies in mid-air with large scissors. The father, who fears never seeing him leave, grows exasperated; the mother smothers him. They try everything, a doctor, an arranged meeting, before throwing him out.
Context
The author, who came from the theatre, wrote the film and then played the lead in it, for his debut in feature films: the production went to the company that Laurens Geels had just founded with Dick Maas, for which it was one of the first films. Henri Garcin plays the father, Olga Zuiderhoek the mother, and one finds Annet Malherbe and Loes Luca, actresses of the same troupe. The geometric sets and the colours chosen one by one give the film its look of a closed world.
Who it is for
A hundred minutes in Dutch, in geometric sets. It helps to know that the humour is icy and that nobody in it laughs at what he says.
Prizes and reception
An unexpected success for a debut, and one of the films which, together with those of Dick Maas, put Dutch cinema back in the spotlight in the eighties.