‘Fabula’: Rotterdam Review

Dir/scr. Michiel ten Horn. Netherlands/Belgium/Germany. 2025. 121mins

A small-time criminal from the Dutch province of Limburg (a spot, the best way the movie tells it, composed fully of mud and despair), Jos (Fedja van Huêt) has all the time blamed his depressing luck on a household curse. However a mixture of an contaminated tick chunk and a botched drug deal sends Jos on a fantastical journey of discovery, main him to lastly discover the reality behind his household and its benighted historical past. The newest movie from Michiel ten Horn is an absurdist, meandering crime comedy that veers off into fantasy and magical realism, and makes very heavy climate of its convoluted plot.

Dated and heavy-handed comedy fails to land

The opening movie of the Rotterdam movie pageant, that is the fifth characteristic from ten Horn, whose debut, The Deflowering Of Eva Van Finish, premiered at Toronto in 2012, and whose sophomore image, Aanmodderfakker, scooped a number of of the highest prizes on the Netherlands Movie Competition in 2014. Parochial, unfunny and charmless, Fabula isn’t essentially the most auspicious selection for a pageant opener; It’s laborious to think about that the movie can have a lot attain past the home viewers.

The image, which is carved up into chapters, begins with a prologue narrated by considered one of a number of voices which tackle storytelling duties on this exposition-heavy story. Set a technology or so previously, the prologue introduces us to Jos’s peat-cutter grandfather who, whereas delving about in all of the mud and despair, discovers an historical artefact – a golden helmet. The destiny of the helmet is clouded within the mists of historical past, however Jos’s father Lei (Michiel Kerbosch) believes that it was re-buried to evade the greedy palms of the opposite peat cutters. Lei additionally believes that discovering the lacking helmet could possibly be the reply to the household’s monetary woes and, to this finish, spends most of his time digging holes in his backyard.

In equity, the monetary woes are in all probability much less because of a household curse or a lacking helmet and extra to do with the truth that Jos, his junkie brother Henrik (Georg Friedrich), his father, and his son-in-law-to-be Ozgur (Sezgin Güleç) are dullards to a person. And since Van Huêt performs the character of Jos with a single expression – gormless incomprehension – it’s laborious to muster a lot sympathy for him.

Jos and Ozgur have already failed to drag off one felony enterprise collectively – the theft of some racing pigeons – and Jos’s money owed are mounting. And now that Jos’s teenage daughter has given beginning to Ozgur’s child, there’s an added incentive to show across the household fortunes. A shady artificial drug take care of a felony gang of German-Turks might be not the easiest way to do it, however hey, these are imbeciles we’re coping with. A lifeless physique and lacking bag of money later, and Jos is on borrowed time. However his mission to find Henrik and the bag of cash is frequently thwarted by bigger than life characters who’re decided to inform him seemingly unrelated tales.

In the meantime, the tick chunk on Jos’s neck causes him to cross out at dramatically handy moments, and his unconscious is besieged by reminiscences of a tragic accident previously.

Regardless of the very best efforts of the assertively whimsical rating, the dated and heavy-handed comedy fails to land and the movie’s pacing drags. And there’s a curious contradiction on the coronary heart of the image – the characters are cartoonish and grotesque, however the look of the movie is, for essentially the most half, grey-tinged and glumly realist. A misfire.