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Growing up in an Amsterdam squat, vintage 1974

There's no getting around it: "open" marriages are tough on young kids. And not so good for the marriages either. That's the lesson of this surprisingly lighthearted, visually beautiful 1974 coming of age tale by writer-director Dorothée Van Den Berghe about a 10-year-old girl called Karo (Anna Franziska Jaeger) who accompanies her parents from Belgium to a communal squat in Amsterdam. Karo's dad, Raven (Matthias Schoenaerts) is a smiling pretty boy, and a jerk. Her mom, Dalia (the beautiful Déborah François of the Dardennes' The Child) is a sensitive soul, who takes offense right away when Raven brings home another woman he met and kissed at a free housing demo. Raven's move to bring Alice (Maria Kraakman) and her two kids to live with them is a really selfish action thinly disguised behind utopian ideals. Lucky Karo has Jacky (Rifka Lodeizen), a sensible Hungarian refugee and former swimming champ, who lives downstairs. Jacky explains to Karo the importance of grades at school and times in a race and begins coaching her at a pool, inculcating into her the importance of goals and rules and all the things her parents' and their commune cohorts have thrown out the window. Jacky pays for swimming lessons for Karo too -- an especially valuable gesture since Karo's no longer the center of attention at home, where everything is becoming more and more chaotic, She has only her pet hedghog, "Iglo," to cuddle with and confide in as the free love, always in plain view in the big loft space where they live, becomes more and more confusing to Karo.

Raven is a jerk, but he's a determined idealist. Dalia moves behind a wall and uses money from making costumes to pay the building owner to keep the water on. When Raven finds out, he's furious and throws her costumes in the canal. Karo goes on. She gets her diploma at the pool after training as a lifesaver. She's so good, she can even dive in the canal and save the costumes. The situation has put her essentially on her own, and she's become fiercely independent.

When Karo goes off to visit Alice's ex, Franz (Dragan Bakema) and the two kids, Daniel (Samuel du Chatiniier) and Tara (Cezanne Q. Cuypers), who lived at the squat for a while and became like family to Kara, they drink soda pop and watch a kiddie dance program on TV and she has a swell time. She's also in love with Daniel. On her way home the next day she sees on TV that the squat has been destroyed and the inhabitants driven out by police. Over the debris she meets her mother and father, who are going to split now. She will go with her mother. Raven will go to another squat. Karo will be with him too, when she wants.

Anna Franziska Jaeger is utterly convincing as Karo, determined, independent, matter of fact. Matthias Schoenaerts remains charismatic. You realize he has a valid cause that he's true to; it's just not very compatible with raising a family. My Queen Karo is an excellent depiction of growing up in the 70's -- deep in the 70's -- and of all the practical issues of 60's and 70's counterculture life, as really lived by people. Clearly the ultimate test of a utopia is how it affects children. Van Den Berghe's excellent writing and direction keep things moving forward and nicely balance the chaos with the sense of outside structure just as these things are balanced in Karo's life. The film is unusually bold and honest about showing the sexual situations and nudity witnessed by children, because there are no walls and everybody sleeps on a big round piece of foam.

The film is graced by Jan Vancaillie's free-flowing cinematography and lighthearted music by Peter Vermeersch. Art director Gert Stas undoubtedly contributed a lot with costume supervisor Bernadette Corstens to have the squat and its inhabitants looking just right. Amsterdam looks good too.

Introduced at Toronto 2009, My Queen Karo has been in various film festivals, including Rotterdam and Tribeca 2010, where the director was present. Seen at the San Francisco International Film Festival 2010.

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©Chris Knipp. Blog: http://chrisknipp.blogspot.com/.