THE NORTHERNERS

Returning after a six-year break following his critically acclaimed and award-winning debut film, “Abel”, Alex van Warmerdan entertains us with a droll tragi-comedy whose style and vision bring to mind the funny-and almost silent-work of Jacques Tati. It is a portrait of provincial Dutch life in 1960, set on the only completed street of a huge, since-abandoned, housing project next to a forest. Thomas is the 12-year-old boy with an overactive imagination and a peculiar circle of friends. With the encourgement of Simon, the mailman (played by van Warmerdam), he observes the “grown-up” life around him and discovers a mysterious vagrant girl who lives in the depths of the ominous, semi-enchanted forest. When a touring group of priests brings their exhibition on African culture to town, things begin to go even more awry. Van Warmerdan has created a witty, hyper-realistic oddball fable that makes the most out of the alleged northern drabness and islolation. THE NORTHERNERS is certainly a pleaser and was the winner of the 1992 Felix (European Film Award) for Best Young European Film. -Kit Kalfs. In Dutch with English subtitles.