Dutch Filmmakers Find Common Ground at Providence’s RIIFF

A little piece of the Netherlands arrived at the Providence Place Mall Saturday night when a double feature of Dutch films played at Providence’s Apple Cinema through the 44th annual Flickers’ Rhode Island International Film Festival (RIIFF). Following a lively pre-reception held in collaboration with Dutch Culture USA, audiences enjoyed a short film in German and a feature film in Dutch, both by filmmakers from the Netherlands who participated in a Q&A session after the screening.

Fanny, a short film directed by sisters Karlijn Milder and Lotte Milder, follows stylist Franziska Angerer, known as Fanny (Abigél Szőke), as she’s plucked from the world of theatrical hairstyling to be the personal hairdresser of Empress Elisabeth of Austria (Franziska von Harsdorf). Based on a screenplay by the sisters and Rosanne Pel, it’s a charming tale of class collision and female friendship beautifully photographed by aforementioned writer/director Karlijn Milder inviting viewers into a world of golden light and deep cobalt blue walls. Equally as enjoyable as watching the central relationship develop was seeing the light rise and fall over still-life-like arrangements of glass bottles and hairbrushes — the sun’s passage revealing new colors in Fanny’s tools as the Milder sisters reveal new aspects of the women’s lives.

Following the short film was Nuclear Boy, a feature film directed by Joren Molter that follows Aike (Guus Blanken), a chemistry enthusiast whose live-streamed backyard experiments become increasingly ambitious as his efforts to attract attention from the people in his life falter. What begins as an off-beat dramedy soon becomes more complex, as it examines themes of isolation, identity, and digitally-mediated relationships.

Blanken’s portrayal of Aike is instantly recognizable to anyone who’s ever been in a high school marching band or math league, with an impressive ability to evoke universal adolescent emotions through the specificity with which his eyes glance downward or he half-swallows after delivering certain lines. His relationship with his mother is crucial to the film’s success, and he has a remarkable scene partner in Jelka van Houten. The film’s dry sense of humor and frequently distant camera can (intentionally) put space between the viewer and the characters, but the tenderness of Blanken and van Houten’s on screen relationship consistently cuts through it.

Watching Aike create new explosions in his backyard for an online audience (cleverly represented as an emotionally detached in-person Greek chorus only he can see) feels at times like a metaphor for filmmaker and audience. When Aike presents his miniature model of the nuclear plant his father works at, we marvel not only at the intricacy of the model (it has a number of moving gears, blinking lights, and functioning smoke stacks that would impress even Wes Anderson), but also at the construction of the shot.

Director Moler, alongside cinematographer Roy van Egmond, captures each scene with as few angles or cuts as possible, letting moments play out in long, un-broken takes that cleverly reposition the actors and props to adjust the composition without ever moving the camera. The frame becomes Moler’s own meticulously constructed diorama, letting the audience delight in the reactions it produces. Shots of real smoke stacks against the sky are subsumed by the film’s vision, becoming as beautiful as clouds passing over a lake. However, Moler’s command of tone, and a smart script by Britt Snel, undermine any moment that flies too close to idyllic, and the film soon develops a radioactive half-life of its own. Those prepared for the fallout are guaranteed an unforgettable time at the theater.