Antonia's Line
(1995)
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As she lies peacefully in bed in her farmhouse, somewhere in the Dutch countryside, the aged Antonia begins to stir awake. In a calm, even cadence the narrator tells us that this is the last day of Antonia's life. Antonia casts her mind back to the day she and her 16-year-old daughter, Danielle, returned to the farm and village Antonia had left as a young woman -- in the days before WWII. They have come to see Antonia's mother, Allegonda, on her death bed. Antonia inherits Allegonda's farm and begins a matriarchy that twists and turns through time, overlapping and linking each successive generation, which builds on the shoulders of the last. She also creates a welcome table for all the odd ducks who don't, won't, or can't fit into the narrow roles prescribed by hidebound and harsh tradition. At 88, surrounded by family members and her great friend and lover Bas, Antonia dies certain of her achievement: As this long chronicle draws to its finish, nothing has come to an end. |
Combining pastoral fantasy and magic realism, feminist polemic and humanist compassion, Marleen Gorris's vibrant drama won the Oscar for best foreign film, albeit in a poor year. Sprawling over five decades, the action boasts a spirited start, in which Willeke van Ammelrooy returns to her home village after the war and introduces us to a gallery of engagingly eccentric characters. The tale then loses its way, however, partly owing to the dullness of Antonia's descendents, but mostly because the opening's life-affirming joy is gradually replaced with a stiff sense of moral rectitude. Poignant and pertinent, perhaps, but ultimately somewhat self-satisfied.