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Phileine Zegt Sorry * Robert Jan Westdijk * 2003

Ronald Giphart is a Dutch writer of who three books are now put to film. Giphart was involved in the making of the first one “Ik Ook Van Jou” (2001, the title literary means “I you too”). I am no big fan of Dutch films, but it is said that recent films are sometimes rather enjoyable. So when ‘Phileine says sorry’ was on TV I decided to give it a try.
Phileine (Kim van Kooten who plays in quite a few Duch films) is a young adult whose latest boyfriend goes to New York for a year. Not without reason she doesn’t trust the situation, so she decides to pay him an unexpected visit. Of course she finds out that her stage-actor boyfriend Max (Michiel Huisman) who plays Romeo has an affair with the woman playing Julia. But things are not as they seem.
‘Phileine Zegt Sorry’ can roughly be qualified as a romantic comedy, but not as sweet as its American genre-mates. Phileine and her girlfriends are real bitches, there are explicit sexual references in speech, a rather grim sense of humour, but mostly notable, some nice filmographic jokes: the characters talk to the camera (on stage they call this the ‘Verfremdungseffekt’ in German), dreams and reality go through eachother sometimes and there are some (good and not too good) special effects.
The film is enjoyable to see some time. The story is alright, but I didn’t hear any of the ‘Giphardian language’.

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