JAN BIJVOET IN BORGMAN

Mean mystifications: a slick but unconvincing entry in the home invasion genre

Maybe one should not come down too hard on the first Dutch film in 38 years to play in competition at Cannes. But the impeccably shot and neatly edited and convincingly acted Borgman is a movie that starts out intriguing and original, becomes disappointing, then finally becomes annoying and disgusting. There are too many hints and teases in too many directions that are never resolved or pulled together. And without resolution or unity, it just seems derivative, Dogtooth without the intellectual bite, Funny Games without the bitter irony and horror. Too much just happens for characters or events to have emotional resonance.

At first things are fresh enough. Some men, one a priest, roust out a man with long unruly hair and a beard living in a burrow underground. He turns out to be known as Camiel Borgman (Jan Bijvoet). He escapes, on his way alerting two partners kipping under earth nearby. Whatever he is, elf, pariah, satan, cult leader, or just energetic weirdo, Camiel winds up in nice neighborhood begging from door to door to be allowed in to have a bath. He's turned away, then one chap, Richard (Jeroen Perceval) beats him up when he's persisted and claimed a past connection to Richard's wife. This is where he lands, at a Dogtooth-style ultra-posh modern house that screams upper bourgeoisie and may remind you distantly of Jacque Tati's Mon Oncle. The wife, Marina (Hadewych Minis), lets him in for that bath and a spot of soup when her husband's away. Before you know it he's charming her three golden-haired tykes with creepy bedtime stories and eyeing the sexy Danish au pair, Stine (Sara Hjort Ditlevsen). The wife and he never actually get it on. She just lets him sleep in the cottage, dodging Richard, telling those bedtime stories so the kids accept his presence (one calls him a "magician" to dad), apparently invading Marina's dreams and turning her against Richard to the extent that after a while she begs Camiel to get rid of him. To do this Camiel resolves to take the gardener's place.

This is when the amusement ends and the real nastiness begins. Camiel calls in not only those two fellow underground dwellers, Ludwig (played by the director, and a sort of Dr. Mengele) and Pascal (Tom Dewispelaere), but two unsavory women, big buxom Brenda (Annet Malherbe) and little Ilonka (Eva van de Wijdeven), also part of his nasty band. Camiel goes away for a bit and comes back, neatly shorn, after the ladies have offed the gardener, to apply for the job (Richard doesn't recognize him). Other applicants are staged to bring out Richard's racism. And hey, he doesn't like poor people either. Clearly we are supposed to want him to be offed. The killing becomes a bit random now. The ladies kill the family doctor in his office just so they can pretend to be his replacements. There is much use of poison and fluids in wine or fruit juice that knocks people out. Victims are cemented and dropped in water. But who cares? Evidently the cult only has their eye on the kids, whom they plan to "turn," and go off with, leaving a bunch of underwater bodies in their wake. They killed the gardener's wife too. There's something about Richard getting fired and Stine in cahoots with the ex-boss's son. Again, who cares? It never comes together into meaning. And the beautiful garden behind the handsome modern house has been torn up for nothing.

All this is carried out very neatly, mind you, with nice chilly images. Hadewych Minis is particularly watchable and appealing in the role of Marina, which is fortunate since nobody else but the children, who're not much defined, has any appeal, though the evil ones or cult members go about their business briskly. One can just imagine how the Cannes selection committee might have given this a chance in Competition ("Look--It's Ducth! Let's let them in this time"). It has been well received by many reviewers. Guy Lodge, a veteran critic for Variety, called it "a sly, insidious and intermittently hilarious domestic thriller that is likely to remain one of the most daring selections of this year’s Cannes competish." But The Guardian's down-to-earth and witty Catherine Shoard, among the dissenters, whom I confidently join, called it "ho-hum Haneke" and remarked on the "many notes of Borgman that ring false enough to make it hard to engage with either the film's essentials or its subversiveness." This is the director's eighth feature. He can confidently be said to know the basics of his trade very well indeed. But one must be careful to distinguish the genuine from the sham, however slick the sham may turn out to be this year. Avoid.

Borgman, 112 mins., debuted at Cannes in competition and showed at many international festivals and has now opened in 11 countries, including France 20 Nov. 2013, entering US theaters in a limited release 6 June 2014. Screened for this review at IFC Center, NYC 11 June 2014.

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