Self-important, over-dramatic, uninspired.

Good films always raise compelling questions, whether the format is fiction or documentary fact.

Close shines in drama with strong language, adult themes.

Close shines in drama with strong language, adult themes.

Why they claim this is a comedy is beyond me. There are funny bits in it of course, but it is a family and community drama, brilliantly acted. Engaging right from the first few minutes.It also has the best and most powerful curse I have ever heard in my life and I have heard a few! I highly recommend this to anyone. There are some harsh bits, so this would be Parental Guidance at the least.

A Dutch matron (Willeke van Ammelrooy) establishes and, for several generations, oversees a close-knit, matriarchal community where feminism and liberalism thrive.Roger Ebert gave the film four stars, saying the film showed "the everyday realities of rural life, a cheerful feminism, a lot of easygoing sex and a gallery of unforgettable characters." Leonard Maltin called it "a treat from start to finish." This really is a "feminist fantasy". As others have pointed out, this film succeeds because it is pro-women without being anti-men. That is the real message of feminism. Unfortunately, the name "feminism" implies a women-centric view, but that was never the point. The goal was equality, and with this film ,we see what that might look like. At least in the Netherlands.

I have seen way to many movies in my life it is beyond official. I have sat through entire trilogies without having to stretch, take a break etc. But this one basically I wish I had just taken a bathroom break for the duration. I am a man I'm sure your aware by the way I am typing this out but don't give me some line about being a sexist. I want you to get paid the same amount blah blah blah, but this movie was just awful. Basically from minute one we skip bout 10 years every five minutes. This would be OK if we fully developed the characters or made you in anyway care about any of them but the director didn't. The plot is about a family of women who decide that they should keep men as a non important part of their lives which would of been great if there would have been a reason for it but there wasn't.(besides the lesbian I get that)They basically just seemed to make men look as objects so if the shoe was on the other foot all you ladies would hate this flick too. What else to say pretty pointless just seemed like the director decided to make a movie that forced feminism on everyone. And this movies sex scenes were gross and just trying to prove some pointless point about women in control. I don't know I'm rambling. Terrible movie. Check out departures if you wanna see a foreign film that was actually worth your time.

Antonia's Line…..(the only important, inspiring math-movie) Here is a stark contrast in movies about the subject and culture theory of mathematics in a modern biographical/educational setting. It's a foreign film, Dutch, and it provides a contemporary alternate point of reference for the many examples of mathematics involved cinema in American film. And what it tells Americans about their society, it's institutions of film and government, how they are seasoned with psychological, anti-intellectual propaganda is fascinating. Those conditions have their pronounced features for different historical reasons, geography, culture drift and the unique roll of the U.S. since WWII and of course the synergy between mathematics, war technology and the evolution of the Cold War to permanent information war. Part of that war you see has opened up a front specifically treating mathematics whereas it had long since considered the public and public education critical targets for softening and fluorochemical bombardment directly linked to today's epidemic mental retardation anomaly--The war not only against information, but the war against mind; and the staple brand manufacturing of the U.S. public educator as motion picture laughing stock in a devil may care, entertainment commercialized riot zone on what the electorate is supposed to keep throwing away its taxes and the students their disposable income, trend adoption, affected attitude, style, mannerisms and other grievously wasteful contaminations.The movie sets its own pace, follows the development of a little girl and her close-knit communal ties. Indeed it would appear that in the structuring of the mathematician here it does 'take a village'. And she turns out to become a remarkably gifted algebraist/group theorist of some kind. We could parallel this film through a procedure often employed in mathematics, what's called an Extension to another European movie "Mindwalk", where we could imagine catching up to her after her career had gone through a government military closure working on SDI in physics. This is the woman the politician's friend takes him to see on Mt. San Michelle; and by this procedure of comparing biographical cinema in the sciences better appreciate its span and gender specification through the traditional underdog in the stereotypically male dominated arenas of math and science.For one thing, the main character isn't portrayed as crazy or mentally ill; if that's important in establishing the sharp contrast repetitively marring American genre in this same category. So the film is a great relief from the mental cruelty heaped on intellectual aspirations in a perennially bullied and sinking American educational decline, promoted through the mass industry of Hollywood film propagandas marketed as so called 'entertainment'. 'Buyer beware.' Not to bother comparing it with the far inferior movie 'Proof', even in the biographical abundance that would have been available to structure a film about John Nash, "A Beautiful Mind", a wide ranging set of life experiences also caught up in Europe for an extended time, instead a hack biographer is selected to play up the crazy smear in order a distortion in film can be manufactured from that template. Chalkboard scenes are important litmus for calibrating the realism or contrivance, in Antonia's Line you have a far more natural setting, in the Nash film something completely different, i.e. yet another instance of 'throwing away the textbook', similar to the classroom setting in 'Dead Poets Society', and a storming of the lecture by an overzealous psychiatrist's Gestapo when Nash lectures on The Riemann Hypothesis. Induce, then blame the victim—the usual knuckle-dragging monkeyshine's half-truths and characteristically feckless White lies. The American audience is dismissed as childish enough to have those sorts of overt propaganda coercions foisted on them without comment or feedback, what are really unqualified abuses of portrayal, demeaning to education and educators and really amount to nothing more than the usual crass bullying of another intellectual that has come to supplant better film and literature development in this country domineered instead by 'Animal House' and high school movies trying to reduce our establishment to zoos and mockeries in terms of international standards. Through this filter of film culture-study a picture of the Cold War victor begins to take on a caste of embedded contradictions…not so much the friendly film skies and greatest country in history…as it is in fact a continuation of the social war of the 1960s, a jingoistic sniping at the public from hidden bunkers and assassin boy scout camps of no account, now more contained in how the news media selectively manages the gathering dirty secrets as they pile up, cumulate in unexplained pandemic disease prevalence or just happen to come crashing down in tons of steel and debris for no official, discernible reason. If, upon weighing the available fare, interpreting and selecting from the alternatives this review stimulates a greater interest to seek out foreign film equivalents rather than continue to be bludgeoned by the bad parent of Hollywood imitations, hopefully the better informed consumer choice will result in a healthier film-going experience avoiding such obstacles to unhindered aspirations.