Thursday, June 19, 2003
Copyright © Las Vegas Mercury

Film: Dutch treat

Zus & Zo offers romantic-comedy respite from mainstream movie mindlessness

By Anthony Allison

In the middle of another dismal summer of overblown, overhyped and over-the-top Hollywood mindlessness, Zus & Zo comes as welcome light relief. Paula van der Oest's smart, sassy sex comedy, about three sisters trying to prevent their gay brother inheriting the beachside vacation home of their youth, is a refreshing surprise.

This rich, darkly comedic Dutch confection, Oscar-nominated for the best foreign film of last year, is fast-paced and fun, full of whip-smart dialogue and wry observation of human foibles, middle-class mores and bedroom politics. But it's also wistful and nostalgic, contrasting the drab, rainswept streets of Amsterdam with the perfect blue skies of Portugal's Algarve coast, in evocative scenes bathed in the perfect golden glow of childhood memory.

An inventive variation on a theme from Chekhov's Three Sisters--or Woody Allen's Hannah and Her Sisters--van der Oest's script deftly depicts the convoluted relationship between the four rival siblings. Sonja (Monic Hendrickx) is a journalist, struggling with a loveless marriage and her latest assignment, an article on "What Women Really Want." Her hypochondriac husband, Hugo (Theu Boermans), is having an affair with her sister, Wanda (Anneke Blok), an avant-garde artist working on an elaborate new exhibit involving interesting bodily fluids. The oldest sister Michelle (Sylvia Poorta) is a single-minded, save-the-planet activist whose physician husband, Jan (Jaap Spijkers), exasperated by his wife's habit of adopting Third World orphans and refugees, is seriously attracted to her kid sister Sonja.

The three sisters temporarily set aside their various differences when brother Nino (Jacob Derwig) suddenly announces his engagement to Bo (Halina Reijn). It seems that not only has Nino broken off his long-standing relationship with Felix Delicious (Pieter Embrechts), "the sexiest TV chef in Holland," he's also not "gay as Frisco," as everyone thought.

"Maybe he's bi with Bo," suggests one of Nino's shocked sisters, who all know that that under the terms of their late father's will, Nino's impending nuptials will mean he and Bo will inherit the family's beloved vacation house on the Portuguese coast. "Long live the marriage of convenience," toasts Hugo privately with Bo, with his eye on the lucrative, upcoming sale of the rambling old mansion.

As the three suspicious sisters set about trying to sabotage the wedding, the plot takes a relatively predictable course toward the big climax, while gently targeting society's usual attitudes to love and marriage, sex, gender and family with bull's-eye, ironic accuracy.

One plan the scheming sisters cook up involves getting Hugo to try and break up the engagement by seducing their prospective sister-in-law. But the balding philanderer's charms fail to work on the feisty young fiancee. "The most boring thing about men your age is that they try so hard to prove they still count," she sneers.

Another priceless scene pokes wicked fun at a deluded Frenchman who really believes his Gallic lover-boy technique has worked its seductive magic on the distracted Michelle.

Even the film's title is a gently clever gag, punning the Dutch for "this and that," or "so-so" with a word, "zus," that also means "sister." Like everything else in van der Oest's sparkling romantic comedy, this subtle joke is not only untranslatable. It is infinitely more satisfying than anything in the current crop of American equivalents--like Rob Reiner's Alex & Emma or Andrew Fleming's horrendous remake of The In-Laws. In short, Zus & Zo is precisely what women (and men) really want at this time of year: An engaging, entertaining summer diversion for moviegoers who still have a brain.