The movie trailer and several reviews in magazines catched my interest, and it arrived at my "must see" list for the Ghent Film Festival 2010. At the end of the screening, though, I was disappointed how the story unfolded. What happened in the dramatic sense stands out, just as it remains a very intriguing course of events. The undercurrent can easily be translated to other situations that can happen to you everyday. This is the main selling point of this movie: demonstrating what harm can be done by mere gossiping, or (even worse) spreading blatant lies about others.
I must admit that I have been particularly troubled by the movie format. Every now and then a name appears in bold letters, meaning for the time being that subsequent events are happening from the viewpoint of this person. Net result is that several scenes are shown twice. It gives rise to repeated deja-vu feelings, and is not being helpful in maintaining the attention span. That those repeated scenes are shot from the same camera angle, does not help much either. On the defense, I realize that several important scenes happen within a car, which does not leave much room for creative viewpoints and camera positions.
Make no mistake: some deja-vu's are not a problem. Take for instance the scene before the house of the lost girl, when the mother leaves the house to speak with the remaining boys and girls, asking them whether there is any news. This is shown in the beginning as well as in the end of the film. Same with the search party that is shown twice. There is no spoiler here, as we know from the beginning (given the announcement text) that the lost girl has been murdered by their peers.
The three boys and three girls who form the main characters of this movie, seem to have one track lives. Their only concern seems mutual attraction and repulsion, interleaved with small and large arguments. However minor on average, these arguments are brought as if they will never speak again with each other, thereby calling the usual names (not repeated here). Neither going to school nor family life seem worth mentioning, other than as wall paper for again another clash. Only one of the boys is an exception, having an invalid mother in a side role, letting him appear to have more than one dimension, but this only seems so in comparison with the others.
Maybe, with myself nearly 50 years past their age, I tend to ignore how important those "social" aspects of life were at that time. I may also have forgotten that nothing is so important than relationships within the peer group, and what others think about you. Though there were several invitations to stay the night, don't expect any bed scenes in this movie, or you will be disappointed. Contrary to popular belief, it looks like none of these invitations were actually followed-up.
Finally, as an other commentator said (I hope he does not own the copyright for this choice of words), notwithstanding that the Dutch title "Schemer" stands for "Twilight", when literally translated to English, the same title can also be construed to stand for scheme-r or intriguant (like Jago in the opera Othello).
I must admit that I have been particularly troubled by the movie format. Every now and then a name appears in bold letters, meaning for the time being that subsequent events are happening from the viewpoint of this person. Net result is that several scenes are shown twice. It gives rise to repeated deja-vu feelings, and is not being helpful in maintaining the attention span. That those repeated scenes are shot from the same camera angle, does not help much either. On the defense, I realize that several important scenes happen within a car, which does not leave much room for creative viewpoints and camera positions.
Make no mistake: some deja-vu's are not a problem. Take for instance the scene before the house of the lost girl, when the mother leaves the house to speak with the remaining boys and girls, asking them whether there is any news. This is shown in the beginning as well as in the end of the film. Same with the search party that is shown twice. There is no spoiler here, as we know from the beginning (given the announcement text) that the lost girl has been murdered by their peers.
The three boys and three girls who form the main characters of this movie, seem to have one track lives. Their only concern seems mutual attraction and repulsion, interleaved with small and large arguments. However minor on average, these arguments are brought as if they will never speak again with each other, thereby calling the usual names (not repeated here). Neither going to school nor family life seem worth mentioning, other than as wall paper for again another clash. Only one of the boys is an exception, having an invalid mother in a side role, letting him appear to have more than one dimension, but this only seems so in comparison with the others.
Maybe, with myself nearly 50 years past their age, I tend to ignore how important those "social" aspects of life were at that time. I may also have forgotten that nothing is so important than relationships within the peer group, and what others think about you. Though there were several invitations to stay the night, don't expect any bed scenes in this movie, or you will be disappointed. Contrary to popular belief, it looks like none of these invitations were actually followed-up.
Finally, as an other commentator said (I hope he does not own the copyright for this choice of words), notwithstanding that the Dutch title "Schemer" stands for "Twilight", when literally translated to English, the same title can also be construed to stand for scheme-r or intriguant (like Jago in the opera Othello).