2001-2010Antoinette BeumerDramaNetherlandsRomance

Antoinette Beumer – De gelukkige huisvrouw AKA The Happy Housewife (2010)

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ferdyonfilms.com wrote:
CIFF 2010: The Happy Housewife (De gelukkige huisvrouw, 2010)

Director: Antoinette Beumer

2010 Chicago International Film Festival

By Marilyn Ferdinand

“I hate actors,” the cinephile said to me after a screening of a personal essay film that had no actors in it at all. I vaguely understood what he was saying, that actors are tricksters whose presence can take away from the sincerity of a film. As someone who treasures the films of Robert Bresson, the Neorealists, the Nouvelle Vague directors, as well as a slew of more contemporary films that use nonprofessionals, I find the unstudied spontaneity of the performances helps me appreciate the film as a whole rather than focusing on the accomplishments of a single performer.

And yet, condemning the acting profession seems like a act of self-hatred for a cinephile. Naturalism isn’t the only style of filmmaking that counts—indeed, high artifice has helped make the careers of such contemporary greats as Quentin Tarantino and Michel Gondry and defined genres such as film noir and science fiction. I’ve observed that when a project doesn’t quite come together, one often finds a triumph of the material over the performers or the performers over the material. In the case of the Dutch film The Happy Housewife, all I can say is that I’m very grateful that Carice van Houten was there to invigorate its sketchy script.

Van Houten, of course, was a revelation to all those who had the privilege of seeing her in Paul Verhoeven’s masterwork Black Book. She demonstrated that the ability to act is a skill we all need, and was a lifesaver for many Jews trying to evade the Nazi slaughter. Her ability to bring emotional depth to Verhoeven’s deliberate melodrama put meat on that genre’s flesh and elevated the entire film. Similarly, her work in The Happy Housewife is a tour de force that grounds a film that might come in for a drubbing because of its subject matter.

We meet Van Houten’s character, Lea, on an airplane. Harry Meyer (Valdemar Torenstra), a handsome architect we were introduced to at a construction site in the opening scene of the film has taken notice of Lea, a stewardess, on boarding the plane. He follows her with his eyes as she leaves his side in first class and bends over to attend to another passenger in coach, exposing her lovely legs and beautifully formed derriere. He asks her for another glass of champagne and follows her as she goes to fetch it. Just as the “fasten seatbelts” sign lights to signal turbulence, the pair goes into a toilet and makes love. Yes, that’s right—corny, corny, corny. Lea and Harry are married, naturally, and still extremely hot for each other after six years of marriage. Harry thinks the airplane toilet is the right place to suggest that he and Lea have a baby; he tempts her by promising to make love to her every day until she gets pregnant. And we get to see Van Houten’s magnificent breasts again in another sex scene, which Harry declares that he “can feel” is the one that made a baby as he lifts Lea by the legs to ensure his seed is firmly planted.

Lea was a bright and flirty woman before she got pregnant, and she remains one afterwards—going golfing with her friends and stealing a golf cart from an obnoxious coworker who constantly hits on her. When she’s about ready to give birth, she insists that she and Harry masturbate together because orgasm is supposed to bring on labor. And, again, another part of the plan of their life seems to work amazingly well.

Unfortunately, Lea’s labor is extremely difficult. The planned home birth with a midwife is 20 hours and counting before they decide it’s time to go to the hospital. The baby seems to have the umbilical cord wrapped around his neck, and a gynecologist is brought in to assist. Despite her desperate protests, Lea gets two, large episiotomies to allow the doctor to unwrap the cord and prevent tearing. When her son is born, she is so traumatized, she can’t bear to look at him. Lea is headed for a major postpartum depression that will see her try to kill her son and end up being committed to a mental hospital for several months until she is deemed no longer a threat to herself and others. During her stay, she will learn that the hallucinations and bad dreams she had immediately following Junior’s birth are related to a father whose death by suicide she was never allowed to grieve.

The Happy Housewife is a product largely created by women. Based on a book by a woman, it was adapted for the screen by two women, and directed by a woman making her feature film debut. It seems highly likely that the harrowing birth scene was lent its veracity and intensity by the familiarity of these women with the horrors of birth. Sadly, however, director Beumer’s background is in television—specifically Dutch soap opera. Truthful moments, like Lea screaming at her “dyke” midwife in the delivery room are undercut by a silly conversation between Harry and the gynecologist about their respective golf handicaps. A birth that could be fatal to the baby—not to mention Lea’s real agony—should not have brought out this kind of offhand, comic moment in either the doctor or the father-to-be.

When the film turns dramatic, confrontation scenes Lea has with her mother (Joke Tjalsma), who demonized Lea’s father to her, and Harry, who wants her to be the same funny, beautiful wife she was before, seem shallow and forced. The mental hospital is filled with quirky types—the guy whom Lea mistakes for being a psychiatrist, the screamer who attacks anyone passing by because she wants a hug, the fat woman, the lonely guy who checks himself in and out of the hospital just to have some nonchallenging company, the young girl who writes on herself (humorously called “sketchpad”)—and Lea predictably comes to love them all. Beumer’s soap opera instinct to make everything bigger, both comically and tragically, is very unfortunate. She likes to scare us with red herrings like Lea carrying a pillow into her crying baby, making us think she is going to suffocate him, only to have her pick him up instead. And Lea’s cure comes about almost too easily by simply having a good cry over her father; unnecessarily, her mother has the tables turned on her by the script by being demonized as a wife who wanted her husband to kill himself long before he did.

What makes this film watchable is the incredible work of Van Houten. She is extremely smart in her witty humor at the beginning of the film and in her challenges to her doctor in the hospital (Marcel Hensema) and breaks down from a smiling, bubbly sexpot in a way that no one notices at first. Her complaints about being split open by the episiotomies, an obvious metaphor for the unleashing of her unresolved issues with her parents, mix the real and metaphorical subtly and effectively. Her confusion and distractedness, when she doesn’t have to interact with peers around her who don’t match her in skill, are frightening and disorienting for the audience. She is bathing her baby and absentmindedly lets go of him to try to remove something from her face in the mirror. This expression of her madness is a cliché of what crazy people do—like a later scene where she dresses like a tart to win her release from the hospital—but her commitment to it is complete, and the horror that the baby might drown is very real and well realized, even though the plastic baby we briefly glimpse floating face down in the water made for a cheap and completely unnecessary shot.

I thought Van Houten was well matched by Tjalsma, whose possessiveness of Junior after Lea is discharged expressed more than caution about Lea’s fitness to mother. Tjalsma has some very bad lines and scenes, but she really triumphs over them, not seeming the monster the script seemed to want to make her into. I liked Torenstra playing a doting father, but he just seemed all wrong as Lea’s husband, even during the happy opening of the film.

While the drama in the film leaves a lot to be desired, the comic dialogue is well written and well realized, and the pop 60s Coffee, Tea, or Me opening and bright music are well done. The quick happy ending of the film seems fit for a Lifetime TV movie. But because of Van Houten’s journey through one woman’s darkness, I actually felt happy and relieved. l

The Happy Housewife will screen Tuesday, October 19, 3:15 p.m. All screenings take place at the AMC River East 21 Theatres, 322 E. Illinois St.

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Language: Dutch | Dzongkha
Subs:none

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