Movie No. 61 (2013): SONNY BOY
Sonny Boy (2011)
Director: Maria Peters
Cast: Ricky Coole, Sergio Hasselbaink
In Dutch, with English subtitles
While the film appears like a modest epic, it is basically a re-telling of a true-to-life interracial romance between a Dutch woman (Rika) and a younger man (Waldemar) from Surinam which spanned decades and with the events of 1920s until the end of World War II as the backdrop. Rika is separated from her husband; she lives with her four children in a rented apartment and sublets one of the rooms to Waldemar. This is where the romance begins.
Director: Maria Peters
Cast: Ricky Coole, Sergio Hasselbaink
In Dutch, with English subtitles
While the film appears like a modest epic, it is basically a re-telling of a true-to-life interracial romance between a Dutch woman (Rika) and a younger man (Waldemar) from Surinam which spanned decades and with the events of 1920s until the end of World War II as the backdrop. Rika is separated from her husband; she lives with her four children in a rented apartment and sublets one of the rooms to Waldemar. This is where the romance begins.
The movie, while presented in a traditional way, hitting the right nerves of the viewers to elicit the right emotions, never strays from the characters. The events in the backdrop (racial discrimination, Nazi occupation, war) may be too big to be ignored, but we tend to care more about the characters than about the threats (of such events). The movie succeeds in this aspect if this is really what the director wants the audience to see. The cinematography is just right for the kind of the tone the movie seems to convey.
The film was Netherland's official submission to Academy Awards in 2011 to compete in the Best Foreign-Language Film category.
The film was Netherland's official submission to Academy Awards in 2011 to compete in the Best Foreign-Language Film category.
Date seen: March 18, 2013
Rating: 3.5/4.0
Comments