Renée Soutendijk Movies

A stuck elevator is used as an allegory for modern German society in this provocative drama. Within the motionless box are four very different people. One is a light-fingered young courier, and another is an embezzler, while the other two are an unhappy couple on the verge of a breakup. Making it worse is the fact that the elevator seems to have a nasty mind of its own. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

In spite of exceptional acting on the part of Kitty Courbois as An Bloem, and the young women playing An's daughters, Renee Soutendijk and Marina de Graaf, this story -- about a woman who leaves her boring husband for independence and takes up with a younger and wealthier man only to lose him to her eldest daughter -- is a bit too fractured cinematically to hold together well. The frenetic movement from one sequence to the next is hard to follow. An Bloem was director Peter Oosthoeks's first feature-length film after staging more than 100 plays and is based on a play by the same name. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide

Set in the Netherlands between 1856 and 1888, this story centers on the gradual coming-of-age of Hedwig (Renée Soutendijk), the daughter of a wealthy family who has been "protected" from ever knowing about sex, a forbidden topic. At 16, Hewig marries a man who cannot stand the idea of sex, seeing all aspects related to it as sinful and demeaning. Given the fact that Helwig is as sensual as most young women her age, she eventually meets an accomplished, attractive pianist and falls in love -- leaving her sterile life with her inflexible husband and taking on a new life as the mistress of the pianist. Soon she is pregnant, and while the pianist is away on a concert tour, she has their child. Her happiness is short-lived because the little baby becomes ill and dies. At this point, Hedwig is living in Paris and the death of her child robs her of the stability she had known until now, and she ends up in a hospital for treatment of her mental and emotional collapse. Although cured of her emotional breakdown, she comes out of the hospital addicted to heroin -- a habit she is forced to sustain through prostitution. Finally, she is able to end the addiction with the help of a nun, and then she returns to the Netherlands to start looking for a new beginning. Based on a Frederik van Eeden novel that was published in 1900 and was far-sighted for its time, attacking the repressive behavior of the religiously "upright," this film still sees Hedwig as morally flawed, her lover as another "free-living" artist, and farmers as somewhat backward. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide

Spetters further elaborates on the themes of sexual obsession previously probed in director Paul Verhoeven's Turkish Delight (1973). Hans Van Tongeren, Toon Agterberg and Maarten Spanjer play, respectively, Reen, Eve and Hans, a closely-knit group of teenage motorcycle lovers who idolize local cycling champion Witkamp (played by Rutger Hauer, the star of Delight). Unfortunately, the adolescents' attempts to rebel take a dark and brutal turn when Van Tongeren is permanently injured in a road accident and Agterberg is gang raped by a group of homosexuals. While the other two young men lust after Fientje (Renee Soutendjik), a promiscuous hashhouse waitress, Agterberg responds to the rape by coming out and taking Fientje's gay brother as a lover. Verhoeven is artistically and sexually graphic in juxtaposing "cycle love" with the friends' carnal interrelations. The title of Spetters is an indigenous triple-entendre -- it refers to the Dutch vernacular for "grease spatterings" (both the oily renderings left behind by the motorcycles commandeered by the film's central characters and the grease slung by Soutendjik), is a slang term for male ejaculate, and was frequently used in the seventies and eighties to refer to people who are sexually appealing ("That girl is a spetter.")

~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide