ANTONIA'S LINE (15)

Directed by: Marleen Gorris

Starring: Willeke van Ammelrooy, Els Dottermans

The Pitch: In a small, conservative Dutch village just after WW2, a tolerant woman presides over a steadily-expanding household of misfits and outcasts.

Theo Sez: For good or ill, and if nothing else, this soporific film does at least have a philosophy - matriarchal, communalistic, live-and-let-live and, it must be said, rather anti-intellectual, which is not surprising in a film so terminally soppy. In many ways it's no worse than any number of period pieces built around life in a small town (viz. IL POSTINO), getting the rhythms wrong as usual, exaggerating the quirkiness of the setting and the quaint notions of these narrow-minded rubes (the kind of movie that makes one appreciate NOBODY'S FOOL all the more) - except that it also has pretensions to being both epic and profound, when in fact it's neither. Births and deaths succeed each other placidly, without much cumulative force, and the film's spiritual message adds up to little more than the banal end-title (Life as endless, constantly-replenished cycle), feelgood fluff for woolly minds. Surprisingly, the title-character's do-goodery isn't too obnoxious, mainly because it's understated - she doesn't set out to educate Society, simply tolerates its outcasts. It's not an offensively sanctimonious film, just a thin and tiresome one, devoid of charm, humour, subtlety or dramatic tension. Indeed, of anything except its philosophy.