Stages

Directed by Mijke de Jong

European filmmakers have the uncanny ability to tease out the rhizoid extensions of middle class complexes, thereby underlining the clumsy finger pointing and theme-spelling of their American contemporaries. Hence Woody Allen was inspired by Ingmar Bergman, not competing with him. Following in that Swedish auteur’s tradition, Mijke de Jong's brilliantly restrained Stages is both a director’s film and an actors’ film. Beautiful cinematography and structure work tightly with the three stars, bringing into relief a fractured yuppie family.

Dinners between divorced parents Roos (Elsie de Brauw) and Martin (Marcel Musters) gradually reveal their knowing pushing and pulling, as conversations shift from their careers to their inexpressive son Isaac (Stijn Koomen). That same ordering of priorities – profession before parenting – has left Isaac a spectator to his own life. Incapable of direct engagement, he breaks into family homes to perform the rituals of a childhood nobody was around to share. On one such visit Isaac comes face to face with the kid he might have been, and, not knowing how to approach the stupefied child, flees clumsily without a word.

Isaac's hushed intrusions are presented in a stable, isolating style, immediately contrasted to the warm, floating close-ups of his parents' restaurant discussions. De Jong textures his divided family unit through structured sequencing that capitalizes on the actors' stage training, while showcasing cinematographer Ton Peters' appropriately sparse sense of composition and style.

Like another recent Northern-European release, Tomas Alfredson's Let the Right One In, Stages' aesthetics amplify the unspoken implications of its narrative. In contrast to loud Americans like Paul Thomas Anderson – whose There Will Be Blood shouts its mythic themes from the rooftops – De Jong whispers the epic implications of middle class narcissism across a cozy restaurant table. The result isn't just more heartwarming and tasteful, it's infinitely more effective.

This review appears in The L Magazine, and can be read here.