Theu Boermans Movies
Inspired by an actual series of disturbing events that shocked the city of Amsterdam, Nothing to Lose director Pieter Kiujers' paranoid psychological thriller follows the disturbing journey of an ageing bus driver who becomes convinced that he's uncovered a major conspiracy. Upon losing both his job as a bus driver and his wife of thirty years, a fifty-nine year old bus driver bursts into Rembrandt Tower and takes a security guard hostage. His sole demand is to speak with the managing director of Philips, a company that once rented space in the towering office building. He's convinced that secret codes are being transmitted via widescreen television, and that an unsuspecting public is being secretly brainwashed. Later, key events from the assailant's past reveal that he may not be as delusional as he first appeared. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Jeroen Krabbé, Jan Decleir, (more)
Dutch filmmaker Paula van der Oest spins this frothy comedy about the ends to which three sisters would go to keep possession of the family's summer home in Portugal. When their 32-year-old brother, Nino, announces his engagement with his younger girlfriend, Bo, his three siblings react not with congratulatory happiness but with shocked indignation instead. For one thing, Nino was gay for most of his teens and twenties; and another, if he gets married then he inherits the summer villa. The three sisters are united by two traits: they each have vivid interior fantasy worlds -- often involving having sex with the other's husbands -- and they each dream of retiring to Portugal. Starving artist Wanda wants to open a gallery there, while writer Sonja dreams of living there with her husband. Michelle, the eldest, wants to flee her hectic domestic life as a housewife and mother to open a home for war orphans. Together, they cheerfully connive to undermine the engagement, as Bo invites them to Portugal to help plan the wedding. This film was screened at the 2001 Toronto Film Festival. ~ Jonathan Crow, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Sylvia Poorta, Anneke Blok, (more)
- 1996
A widowed Latvian father's quest for a much-loved Dutch pen pal, whom he hasn't heard from in three decades, provides the basis of this comedy-drama. The father is accompanied by his traumatized and mute eight-year-old son whom he had to kidnap from a Riga hospital. Together, the two flee towards Holland where the father Yuris hopes to find his long-lost friend Marie, whom he remembers as a great beauty. During the long journey, father and son have several funny adventures, many of which occur because neither father nor son speak much Dutch. They finally arrive at Marie's door empty-handed. What they find, gives them little hope, for the lithe young idealist of Yuris' dreams has become middle-aged and cynical. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- 1994
Fantasy and reality are combined in this Dutch allegory about the dangers of materialism based upon a play by Gustav Ernst. It is set in a grim and gray one industry town. The industry is a huge wire factory. The company goes bankrupt and the working class residents go into an economic tailspin until the Americans buy and reopen the place. Simultaneously, Gina, a young entrepreneur looking to be free of her lover Harry, joins up with a local computer expert who gives her lessons. The town happenings are quietly observed by a young girl. While the town folk are busy making money or having sex, a strange phenomenon occurs: the town is slowly overtaken by red roses and other plants. The film ends on a grim note with an insane Harry running about clutching a chainsaw and driving a forklift while the wire factory across town explodes. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Marieke Heebink, Jaap Spijkers, (more)
- 1990
Bert (Theu Boermans) is a stolid, hard-working Dutch farmer. Like many of his kind, he is suspicious of innovation and stylishness. A widower, while he is attending an agricultural exposition in the city, he meets, and is photographed by Roos (Annke Blok), a woman painter. Their relationship blossoms from there, and he has a romance with this (to him) very alien woman, an exemplar of much that he distrusts. She comes to visit him and his son in the countryside, and their affair continues. Eventually, their differences give rise to a quarrel which has tragic consequences. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Theu Boermans, Anneke Blok, (more)
- 1990
Gabriel is a mural painter from Dutch Surinam who has been hired to paint a mural of the Virgin Mary in a church in Curaçao. Curaçao is a self-governing island in the Netherlands Antillees off the coast of South America. In the story, he has taken a mixed-race woman as his model, and the emerging picture, with its negroid features, is creating quite a stir. Meanwhile, he has fallen in love with his model, who is engaged to a white police officer, and the wife of the island's governor has fallen in love with him. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide
- 1989
Liesje has heard about her father all her life. The story her mother tells her is that she met and married in Rio de Janeiro, and left him to return to Amsterdam because she was homesick. He is supposed to rejoin them after he has made a lot of money from his crocodile hunting business. In the meantime, they have been staying at her grandfather's house. Grandpa is dead, and Liesje's mother has a boyfriend who is staying in his old room. Liesje is not happy about his, and quietly manages to sell off some old heirloom stamps to find her father and set things right. Instead, she discovers the truth, which is that he is just around the corner, and is serving time in prison for smuggling. This serious children's drama is based on a book by Burny Bos, and was released in some markets as Maman! dessine-moi un papa. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Geert de Jong, Theu Boermans, (more)
- 1984
Set at the beginning of the 14th century, this story about the revolution against French rule by a group of Flemish cities, based on a novel by Hendrik Conscience, was meant to portray the panorama of an epic moment in Flemish history. Philip the Fair (1268-1314), king of France and Navarre, was ultimately defeated in the Battle of the Golden Spurs in 1302, and along the way to that defeat, subplots and interwoven events in this film tend to paint the protagonists in black or white, such as the wife of the French king, Joan the First of Navarre, shown as particularly murderous. Originally twice as long as its current running time of 108 minutes, the discontinuity and lack of character development in De Leeuw Van Vlaanderen might be due to the cutting block, but the exaggeration in making all the French vile, corrupt, unscrupulous, and brutal, and the Flemish innocent, brave, and virtuous is not due to editing alone. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Theu Boermans, Jan Decleir, (more)
- 1982
A young husband and wife live at close quarters in a small industrial town, where he works in the basement of a brewery, but she has designs on moving up in the world. The husband is fixated on keeping clippings of news stories about bizarre crimes and accidents - stories that are visually portrayed alongside the ordinary family dynamics. Aside from the young couple, a 14-year-old girl is there to help out with the household chores, and her detached spying on all covert activities (she observes the wife being raped by the brother-in-law) has a chilling undertone. Meanwhile, the morbid side of the husband draws him to the 14-year-old, and desires that had been dormant begin to surface. The couple, their relatives, and the domestic certainly seem trapped in a labyrinth that has no end. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Carla Hardy, Akkemay, (more)
