`Line' chronicles women
Antonia's Line , the fourth film by Dutch feminist filmmaker Marleen Gorris, imagines a world where day-to-day life is carefully and peacefully managed by women for women.
In this feminist fairy tale for the '90s, women aren't limited by their roles as mothers, wives and daughters. Rather, they measure themselves in terms of their ability to navigate in an unpredictable world.
In this kinder, gentler feminist vision, women welcome men as necessary evils -- as friends, lovers and fathers of their children. It's a whimsical and touching look at five generations of independent and admirable women in one Dutch family.
Antonia's Line takes place on a farm in the Dutch countryside, beginning at the close of World War II. The film begins with octogenarian Antonia (Willeke van Ammelrooy) the family's matriarch, lying peacefully in bed in her farmhouse. The narrator serenely announces that this is the last day of her life.
The woman's mind -- and the film's camera -- floats back in time to the day that she and her 16-year-old daughter, Danielle (Els Dottermans), return to the village and farm that Antonia had left as a young woman before World War II. They have come to see Antonia's mother, Allegonda, on her deathbed.
Antonia decides to stay in the village. She creates a welcome table for some Dutch misfits, so called because they don't quite fit into their narrow traditional roles. She reaches out to the melancholic and reclusive Crooked Finger (Mil Seghers); Olga (Fran Waller Zeper), who triples as village midwife, undertaker and cafe owner; Loony Lips (Jan Steen), the village idiot; and Mad Madonna (Catherine ten Bruggencate), who howls at the moon because, as in their strictly Catholic town, she can't marry her great love, the Protestant (Paul Kooij) who lives downstairs but "would rather be on top of her -- in more senses than one."
Upon inheriting Allegonda's farm, Antonia begins a robust matriarchy that twists and turns through generations, each building on the shoulders of the last. Liberated woman that she is, Antonia doesn't need a husband. When nearby farmer Bas (Jan Decleir) proposes, she refuses, although after much negotiation, she later accepts him as her lifelong lover and ally.
Beautiful and artistic, Danielle sees into the inner truth of things, such as the statues of angels that reprove hypocrites.
One day she stumbles upon Farmer Daan's son, Pitte (Filip Peeters), raping his retarded sister, DeeDee. The disquieting scene reaches a climax when Danielle shoves a pitchfork into Pitte's hands. She takes her back to the farm, where DeeDee remains and marries Loony Lips.
Later, Danielle decides she wants a child. Her liberated mother asks if she wants to marry but accepts her "no." The women go to the city to solicit help from Letta (Wimie Wilhelm), who runs a shelter for unmarried pregnant women. Letta happens to have a stud for a brother, who squires Danielle on his motorcycle to a hotel. Their awkwardness gives way to tender lovemaking, and then she executes a post-coital handstand to conceive her daughter, Therese (Veerle van Overloop).
The Parish priest (Leo Hogenboom) preaches vehemently against the fruits of fornication, but he cannot reconcile his enjoyment of life with the church's enjoyment of death. Antonia catches him in flagrante delicto with a young girl in a confessional. He then leaves the church for Antonia's enclave, where he fathers 11 children with Letta, who has left the city to live on the farm.
Antonia's precocious granddaughter, Therese, grows up to be quite a scholar -- studying math, composing music and quoting Schopenhauer. Danielle falls in love with her daughter's tutor, Lara (Elsie de Brauw), who also comes to live at the farm. In one of the film's best earthly moments, a montage of lovemaking scenes is underscored by dramatic orchestral music.
As an adolescent, Therese is raped by a vengeful Pitte (thankfully, Gorris doesn't show this). Spunky Antonia hunts him down with a gun and lays a life-curse on his head. She spares his life, but Bas' sons immediately beat him and his own brother drowns him.
There, Therese finds university men self-absorbed and unsatisfying. She returns to the village to marry Letta's eldest son, Simon (Reinout Bussemaker) who is her intellectual inferior but who has loved her since childhood.
There she becomes pregnant, and after some enlightened debate about keeping the child, gives birth to Sarah (Thyrza Ravesteijn), an adorable pre-Raphaelite child who becomes the apple of Antonia's eye. As an adult, Sarah narrates the film.
The existential Crooked Finger finally succumbs to the misery enveloping him. In a morose letter, he tells Therese that he can no longer disillusion himself that "there is a heavenly dessert after this indigestible meal." He then hangs himself.
At age 88, Antonia tells Sarah that she will die that day. Surrounded by her progeny and Bas, she lets go, certain of her achievement.
While Antonia's Line is generally a well-acted, exuberant celebration of strong women, it takes an occasional misstep. In one scene, the Virgin Mary imagery overpowers everything else. In a film already idealizing women, rhetoric about salvation coming to the world through a woman seems unnecessarily heavy-handed. Similarly, when characters fall in love, it happens rather uneventfully and melodramatically -- at first sight.
Despite minor flaws, the film remains a charming feminist fairy tale. However, it is a hopeful vision of what women could become. As the movie's postscript says, "As this long chronicle draws to its finish, nothing has come to an end."
Don't write Antonia's Line off as a snotty, subtitled movie only for women. It's a film in which both men and women can imagine strong women who stand wise in the face of eternal questions and challenges to freedom, dignity and fun to make it through life.
This item appeared in the Arts & Entertainment section of the March 29, 1996 issue.
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