‘Holland’ receives 5.5 out of 10 stars.
Premiering on Prime Video on March 27th, ‘Holland’ is proof that even a potentially compelling concept and a decent cast can be squandered if the movie utilizing them doesn’t commit fully.
It’s a shame, as director Mimi Cave has made impressive work before. Here, though she seems to have lost her way with a meandering tale of suburban secrets.
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Does ‘Holland’s tale of tulips bloom?
It’s a rule that if your community and relationship in a thriller is apparently perfect on the surface, there must be dark secrets lurking beneath. After all, who really wants to sit through a story where it’s all apple pie and happy families?
Yet we’ve seen the story of suburban secrets so many times on screens both big and small that a movie really has to have something fresh to say about it. Unfortunately, even though Cave delivered with her previous movie, the cannibalistic comedy ‘Fresh,’ there’s not much of that spirit here.
In fact, there’s not much of any spirit. A movie riven by a split in its personality, the first half is a funny and sometimes entertaining look at a town and a relationship seemingly lost in time –– it’s set in the year 2000, but could be the 1960s for all its folksy traditionalism. The second half pulls the trigger on the thriller element as Nicole Kidman’s Nancy starts to learn the truth of who she’s married to, but even then the movie wants to keep up the jokier elements and the two tones really aren’t merged successfully.
Script and Direction
Writer Andrew Sodroski has experience more in TV, creating a season of ‘Manhunt’ based around the Unabomber. His movie credits are mostly limited to a couple of crime thrillers. The problem with his scripting for ‘Holland’ is that it feels aimless –– for a movie whose main characters are a life skills teacher who prides herself on her cooking, the storyline is underbaked, and the other an optometrist, it’s noticeable how unfocused the characterization turns out.
It’s also an issue that the use of model train sets as metaphor for the control that one character has over another is so heavily employed as to approach parody. It’s one thing to employ a metaphor; quite another to beat it into the ground.
Cave does her best to bring some style to the proceedings; a dream sequence where Nancy imagines strange images such as her neighbors becoming mannequins and a flood sweeping through the town’s main street are effective, but the rest of the movie never achieves the same level of creepiness.
There are missed opportunities here and sadly, the movie fails to really coalesce.
Cast and Performances
Nicole Kidman has spent the last few years mostly playing icy matriarchs, entitled wealthy housewives or driven businesswomen and if there’s an advantage to ‘Holland,’ it’s that she is able to once more tap into a kookier, sweeter character, albeit one who is not afraid to fight back when it counts.
She’s typically impressive, but the character doesn’t always offer her everything she needs, and it’s ultimately nowhere near as memorable as some of her other work.
Matthew Macfadyen, meanwhile, leans into the twin sides of Nancy’s husband Vandergroot –– at once the nerdy, seemingly sweet local ophthalmologist who brought her from a dead-end small town existence to this seemingly perfect existence and someone who is going to great lengths to conceal things (even if he leaves giant clues in his model train set up, a seemingly silly idea for someone with so much to hide).
He’s perfectly fine in the role, creepy when required and forever telling Nancy to just ignore what she’s worried about. But once the truth is revealed, the character becomes far more one-note.
Gael García Bernal plays Dave Delgado, Nancy’s closest confidante at the school where they both work, and a man who would like their relationship to be more. Bernal brings some solid shades to the character, and has a good arc.
Elsewhere, there is some truly wasted talent on display. Though he certainly has a couple of decent scenes to show what he can do, young Jude Hill (who broke out in Ken Branagh’s ‘Belfast’) is here reduced to minor moments as the couple’s son, Harry.
Ditto Rachel Sennott, so good in the likes of ‘Shiva Baby’ and ‘Bottoms’ has exactly one tiny scene at the start of the movie to show what she can do, but it wasn’t even worth her showing up.
The other townsfolk are mostly limited to plot devices rather than actual humans, but the likes of Lennon Parham, Jeff Pope and Chris Witaske do what they can with tiny roles.
Final Thoughts
‘Holland’ certainly has ideas on its mind, but sadly those ideas have been explored more effectively before. There’s not enough style or story here to really make it worth your while.
4qrqDqazHSA7loZaz6rxbWhat is the plot of ‘Holland’?
A teacher (Nicole Kidman) in a small midwestern town suspects her husband (Matthew Macfadyen) of living a double life, but things may be worse than she initially imagined.
Who is in the cast of ‘Holland’?
- Nicole Kidman as Nancy Vandergroot
- Gael García Bernal as Dave Delgado
- Matthew Macfadyen as Fred Vandergroot
- Jude Hill as Harry Vandergroot
- Jeff Pope as Squiggs Graumann
- Isaac Krasner as Shawn Graumann
- Lennon Parham as Gwen
- Rachel Sennott as Candy Deboer
- Jacob Moran as Matt
