Holland, Mi., is a type of high-concept American cities the place nothing feels actual. Modeled after somebody’s fantasy of an 18th-century Dutch village, it has windmills and tulip fields and ersatz canal homes. To Nancy Vandergroot (Nicole Kidman), it appears quaint, however to our eyes, it’s pure kitsch — which is a mode Kidman does nicely, channeling the tone of “To Die For” and “The Stepford Wives” in Mimi Cave’s mysterious thriller.
Like these motion pictures, “Holland” embeds us largely in its protagonist’s standpoint, which isn’t a wholly credible place to spend two hours, however a enjoyable one for many who like teetering in that is-she-crazy-or-is-she-the-only-sane-person-here zone. Because it’s Cave behind the digicam, your creativeness will doubtless leap to explanations much more fascinating than the place Andrew Sodroski’s Black Listed script winds up. (Enjoyable reality: At one level, “Holland” was meant to be Errol Morris’ fiction debut, with Naomi Watts within the lead.)
The movie marks Cave’s follow-up to “Recent,” a ghoulish relationship satire — and a pioneering instance of the rising gaslighting style — wherein a captivating dork (Sebastian Stan) topics his dates to a uncommon type of torture (make that medium uncommon). However it was written earlier than #MeToo made standing as much as The Man such a artistic sport, and finally looks like a throwback to ’90s-era sleeping-with-the-enemy motion pictures.
So what sort of thoughts video games would possibly Nancy’s husband Fred (Matthew Macfadyen) be as much as? A conscientious (if barely patronizing) companion and revered group optometrist, the person spends most of his free time tinkering together with his mannequin railroad, a pastime he enthusiastically shares with their adolescent son Harry (Jude Hill, the kid star of Kenneth Branagh’s “Belfast,” offered right here like an escapee from Village of the Damned). In a single scene, she checks in on the 2 of them in Fred’s non-public prepare room, the place she sees her husband clipping the limbs off a plastic 1:87-scale girl. That hardly appears regular, however nothing is in Nancy’s world.
It’s fascinating to see “Holland,” which premiered on the SXSW movie pageant upfront of its March 27 Prime launch, lower than two months after the demise of David Lynch, since he’s clearly a robust affect on Cave’s hallucinatory aesthetic. As Nancy’s voiceover describes her life in Holland as “one of the best place on earth,” the digicam sweeps alongside rows of Kodachrome-intense tulips, earlier than abruptly chopping to the muddle of her life — an apparent nod to Lynch’s “Blue Velvet,” in regards to the nightmare festering behind the American Dream.
Nancy suspects one thing’s not fairly proper together with her marriage, however she will be able to’t put her finger on what’s amiss. Fact be informed, she’s developed extramarital emotions for Dave (Gael García Bernal), the sympathetic store trainer at the highschool the place she works, which suggests this might all be an elaborate case of projection: Nancy desires to cheat, so she manufactures a situation the place Fred’s being untrue to justify her personal indiscretions. But when it had been that easy, she most likely wouldn’t go fairly up to now to research him.
Sodroski’s screenplay references rocky moments within the couple’s previous, in addition to a time when Nancy’s life was far much less idyllic than the Pleasantville existence that’s lastly beginning to bore her. “Once you develop up on the surface of every part, and a man affords you a means in, after all you’re going to take it,” Nancy tells Dave, a Mexican for whom shifting to Holland didn’t essentially enhance the best way others deal with him. (A subplot involving a drunken and certain abusive ex-bus driver illustrates the bigotry nonetheless directed his means.)
We will assume that as a trainer, Nancy will need to have loads of colleagues and pals she will be able to open up to, however given the upstanding entrance the Vandergroots challenge to this churchy group, she trusts solely Dave, enlisting him in her investigation. Because the kind of partner who cooks and cleans like a Fifties housewife, Nancy is aware of their dwelling inside-out. “Ipso facto,” she concludes, no matter proof would possibly exist of Fred’s extramarital actions have to be hidden away in his workplace secure.
Cave clearly enjoys orchestrating a pair of “Rear Window”-style suspense sequences, wherein Nancy snoops first at Fred’s office and later into no matter her husband’s actually doing on these frequent out-of-town optometry conferences he’s at all times attending. The helmer takes even larger pleasure imagining Nancy’s goals, the place Cave is free to get radically expressionistic whereas additionally planting pink herrings. It’s throughout these visions that Cave’s crew begins to blur the road between Nancy’s life and the scale-model metropolis to which Fred dedicates a lot consideration.
The place every part was meant to look idealized at first, as Nancy’s paranoia spirals, manufacturing designer JC Molina and “Midsommar” DP Pawel Pogorzelski lean into the paradox. Pogorzelski specifically subliminally incorporates Nancy’s subjectivity into his camerawork, though there are extra self-conscious cases too, just like the ingenious high-angle shot, enhanced by tilt-shift trickery, that makes Nancy and Harry look as in the event that they’re tiny model-train figures working towards their entrance door.
By way of all of it, Macfadyen appears suspiciously good-natured, which merely encourages us to guess what he may be hiding. The “Succession” star brings a disconcerting Kevin Spacey-like power to his efficiency, which reinforces the connection some would possibly detect between “Holland” and 1999’s “American Magnificence” — one other film in regards to the poisonous black mould that thrives simply beneath the veneer of suburban perfection. After a number of years of trying extra pure, Kidman additionally has a barely synthetic look (there’s one thing off together with her tulips), which Cave makes use of to the movie’s benefit.
“Holland” blossoms within the area the place all-American home fantasy ends and nightmares start, however by no means fairly delivers on its premise, if solely as a result of the decision feels so acquainted. And but, when thought of by way of the lens of Kidman’s risk-taking profession, it represents one other fascinating alternative for a star who’s racked up a number of the edgiest credit of the previous quarter-century. It’s a disgrace then that “Holland” doesn’t go father in both the freak-out or high-camp instructions.
Only one or two really outrageous moments could make the distinction between forgettability and hall-of-fame effed-up-ness, and “Holland” takes probably the most surprising flip of all: As soon as the massive household secret’s out within the open, it winds up feeling completely unusual.
