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Malaise is the order of the day in Dutch-Bosnian writer-director Ena Sendijarević’s costume drama Sweet Dreams. Set in the Dutch East Indies at the dawn of the 20th century, the film captures the putrefaction of colonial rule with a morbid sense of humor. But for a work that’s all about boredom, Sweet Dreams is far from boring.
It’s the suspicious demise of Dutch sugar plantation owner Jan (Hans Dagelet) that sets the plot in motion. Agathe (Renée Soutendijk), the man’s profoundly cynical widow, writes to their son, Cornelis (Florian Myjer), telling him to return from the Netherlands to take over the estate. But when Cornelis and his pregnant wife, Josefien (Lisa Zweerman), arrive, it turns out that Jan has left everything to Karel (Rio Kak Den Haas), the progeny of his unconcealed liaisons with the family’s domestic servant, Siti (Hayati Azis). If Cornelis and Josefien...
It’s the suspicious demise of Dutch sugar plantation owner Jan (Hans Dagelet) that sets the plot in motion. Agathe (Renée Soutendijk), the man’s profoundly cynical widow, writes to their son, Cornelis (Florian Myjer), telling him to return from the Netherlands to take over the estate. But when Cornelis and his pregnant wife, Josefien (Lisa Zweerman), arrive, it turns out that Jan has left everything to Karel (Rio Kak Den Haas), the progeny of his unconcealed liaisons with the family’s domestic servant, Siti (Hayati Azis). If Cornelis and Josefien...
- 4/7/2024
- by William Repass
- Slant Magazine
![Image](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/M/MV5BNDQ4NTBmOGItZDY2ZC00MTQ2LThjZWMtMzIxNzBmYmZmNmI2XkEyXkFqcGdeQXVyMTE0MzQwMjgz._V1_QL75_UY281_CR0,0,500,281_.jpg)
It takes place on a sugar plantation, but Ena Sendijarević’s magnificently composed, eerily satirical “Sweet Dreams” has something more like acid flowing through its veins. Acid — or maybe formaldehyde, given the embalmed pallor of the dysfunctional Dutch colonial family whose values are so elegantly dissected within it. In only her second feature, after the Rotterdam-awarded “Take Me Somewhere Nice,” the Bosnian-Dutch filmmaker has established herself as a formidable talent with an eye for absurdity in Academy ratio, and a feel for the manicured, placid surfaces that contain rot and rebellion just as corsetry cinches in flesh.
It is 1900, and this little corner of the Dutch East Indies is verdant, damp jungle terrain. The air is thick with biting insects. Vincent Sinceretti’s extravagantly rich sound design is so multilayered that you can differentiate the crickets from the gnats from the omnipresent, whining mosquitoes. But part of the wilderness has been tamed — or more accurately,...
It is 1900, and this little corner of the Dutch East Indies is verdant, damp jungle terrain. The air is thick with biting insects. Vincent Sinceretti’s extravagantly rich sound design is so multilayered that you can differentiate the crickets from the gnats from the omnipresent, whining mosquitoes. But part of the wilderness has been tamed — or more accurately,...
- 8/25/2023
- by Jessica Kiang
- Variety Film + TV
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![Image](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/M/MV5BOGNiNWMyZGMtMzE4Yy00ZmVjLTgyOTUtMmNjN2EyYjRiMWI0XkEyXkFqcGdeQXVyMTE0MzQwMjgz._V1_QL75_UX140_CR0,0,140,140_.jpg)
Writer-director Ena Sendijarević’s second feature, Sweet Dreams, follows a recent trend of arthouse films — including Zama, The Settlers and The Tale of King Crab — that explore Europe’s troubled colonial history through a postmodern mix of satire, surrealism and cinematic lyricism.
All of these elements are present in a story set in 1900 in the Dutch East Indies, where a family running a prosperous sugar plantation finds its status quo upended when their patriarch suddenly passes away. Left to deal with the fallout, the landowner’s wife and children are quickly exposed to the limits, as well as the terrors, of colonialism, in the face of Indigenous people who refuse to keep bowing down.
Shot in the 1.33:1 Academy ratio and divided into chapters like a novella, Sendijarević’s movie maintains a certain distance from its subject, gazing at it through a contemporary prism that critiques the racism and exploitation of the epoch.
All of these elements are present in a story set in 1900 in the Dutch East Indies, where a family running a prosperous sugar plantation finds its status quo upended when their patriarch suddenly passes away. Left to deal with the fallout, the landowner’s wife and children are quickly exposed to the limits, as well as the terrors, of colonialism, in the face of Indigenous people who refuse to keep bowing down.
Shot in the 1.33:1 Academy ratio and divided into chapters like a novella, Sendijarević’s movie maintains a certain distance from its subject, gazing at it through a contemporary prism that critiques the racism and exploitation of the epoch.
- 8/7/2023
- by Jordan Mintzer
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
![Image](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/M/MV5BNGUwMTBiZjEtN2MzYS00YWRmLWE1NDUtYTc2MTAzYWNhYzE4XkEyXkFqcGdeQXVyMTE0MzQwMjgz._V1_QL75_UY281_CR70,0,500,281_.jpg)
As Leo Tolstoy wrote, all happy families are alike, while each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. The rich cry too and there is something universal about the rivalries between the loved and the unloved wives, sons and heirs, regardless of their social status. So, why would the family of the sugar plantation owners in the Dutch East Indies in Ena Sendijarević's sophomore feature “Sweet Dreams” be any different? The film has just world-premiered at Locarno, where we also caught it.
Sweet Dreams is screening in Locarno Film Festival
Somewhere in Indonesia in the early 1900s, Jan (Hans Dagelet) owns the plantation and the sugar processing plant and rules it with an iron fist. He is no softer even at home, where he commands over his seemingly blasée European wife Agathe (Renée Soutendijk) and his Indonesian housekeeper-lover-concubine Siti (Hayati Azis), while the two battle one another, each...
Sweet Dreams is screening in Locarno Film Festival
Somewhere in Indonesia in the early 1900s, Jan (Hans Dagelet) owns the plantation and the sugar processing plant and rules it with an iron fist. He is no softer even at home, where he commands over his seemingly blasée European wife Agathe (Renée Soutendijk) and his Indonesian housekeeper-lover-concubine Siti (Hayati Azis), while the two battle one another, each...
- 8/6/2023
- by Marko Stojiljković
- AsianMoviePulse
![Image](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/M/MV5BNWZiMzcyNzQtMGU4YS00MTQyLWI2MjgtYzkxMmZiMDQ3NGQ1XkEyXkFqcGdeQXVyMTE0MzQwMjgz._V1_QL75_UX500_CR0,0,500,281_.jpg)
Editor’s Note: This review originally published during the 2023 Locarno Film Festival. Dekanalog will release “Sweet Dreams” in U.S. theaters on Friday, April 12.
Two-thirds of the way into Ena Sendijarević’s stylized sophomore feature “Sweet Dreams”, a heavily pregnant white Dutch colonialist, Josefien (Lisa Zweerman), is attempting to relieve some pent-up hormonal tension by straddling her bedpost and getting herself off. It is at this exact moment that an Indonesian housegirl, Siti (Hayati Azis), walks in bearing a jug of water and a glass.
Josefien experiences no shame and seizes her chance to manipulate Siti, for Siti has the status afforded by bearing the illegitimate son, Karel (Rio Den Haas), of the recently deceased plantation head, Jan (Hans Dagelet). Unbeknownst to Siti, Jan left it all to Karel and now the young heir and his mother both have targets on their backs for Jan’s older son, Cornelius (Florian Myjer...
Two-thirds of the way into Ena Sendijarević’s stylized sophomore feature “Sweet Dreams”, a heavily pregnant white Dutch colonialist, Josefien (Lisa Zweerman), is attempting to relieve some pent-up hormonal tension by straddling her bedpost and getting herself off. It is at this exact moment that an Indonesian housegirl, Siti (Hayati Azis), walks in bearing a jug of water and a glass.
Josefien experiences no shame and seizes her chance to manipulate Siti, for Siti has the status afforded by bearing the illegitimate son, Karel (Rio Den Haas), of the recently deceased plantation head, Jan (Hans Dagelet). Unbeknownst to Siti, Jan left it all to Karel and now the young heir and his mother both have targets on their backs for Jan’s older son, Cornelius (Florian Myjer...
- 8/5/2023
- by Sophie Monks Kaufman
- Indiewire
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![Image](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/M/MV5BNmQ3MzMyOGEtNDMxZC00MDYzLTkyOTgtNWNlYTkyYWM2MDkzXkEyXkFqcGdeQXVyMTE0MzQwMjgz._V1_QL75_UX140_CR0,1,140,207_.jpg)
Stars: Sallie Harmsen, Noor van der Velden, Fred Goessens, Anneke Blok, Alexandre Willaume | Written by Nico van den Brink, Daan Bakker | Directed by Nico van den Brink
Moloch opens in 1991 as a young girl feeding a mouse is frightened by the sounds of what sounds like an extremely violent attack in the room above her. Soon blood is raining from between the floorboards and pouring down the walls onto the terrified girl.
Thirty years later, Betriek is now grown up and has a daughter of her own, Hanna (Noor van der Velden). It was Betriek’s grandmother that we heard being killed in the prologue. Her father Roelof was traumatized by her death and still drunkenly waits for the killer to return. Her mother suffers from an unknown illness that subjects her to what seems to be seizures. Add in the death by heart attack of Hanna’s father and...
Moloch opens in 1991 as a young girl feeding a mouse is frightened by the sounds of what sounds like an extremely violent attack in the room above her. Soon blood is raining from between the floorboards and pouring down the walls onto the terrified girl.
Thirty years later, Betriek is now grown up and has a daughter of her own, Hanna (Noor van der Velden). It was Betriek’s grandmother that we heard being killed in the prologue. Her father Roelof was traumatized by her death and still drunkenly waits for the killer to return. Her mother suffers from an unknown illness that subjects her to what seems to be seizures. Add in the death by heart attack of Hanna’s father and...
- 7/21/2022
- by Jim Morazzini
- Nerdly
![Jim Jarmusch](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/M/MV5BMTc5ODE0MzI5NF5BMl5BanBnXkFtZTgwMzY0MTU4OTE@._V1_QL75_UY207_CR20,0,140,207_.jpg)
![Jim Jarmusch](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/M/MV5BMTc5ODE0MzI5NF5BMl5BanBnXkFtZTgwMzY0MTU4OTE@._V1_QL75_UY207_CR20,0,140,207_.jpg)
Take a hefty amount of Jim Jarmusch, mix in a few heaping tablespoons of David Lynch, leaven it all with Bosnian absurdism and you can more or less envision “Take Me Somewhere Nice,” the stylishly quirky debut feature from Ena Sendijarević that won Rotterdam’s Special Jury Prize for exceptional artistic achievement. The film certainly looks good, thanks to the director’s eye for unusual Academy-ratio compositions and cinematographer Emo Weemhoff’s playful way of executing it onscreen, yet Sendijarević’s screenplay defiantly resists going anywhere, turning this off-kilter story of a Dutch-raised Bosnian teen returning to the motherland to visit her hospitalized father into a one-trick pony. Festivals will understandably consider this an audience pleaser, but Sendijarević likely has better, more mature films in her future.
Bright, candy-toned digital colors and a deadpan view of the world capture the desired emotional climate, which opens nicely with Alma (Sara Luna...
Bright, candy-toned digital colors and a deadpan view of the world capture the desired emotional climate, which opens nicely with Alma (Sara Luna...
- 2/7/2019
- by Jay Weissberg
- Variety Film + TV
Standing tiny before a vaguely impressed crowd, fake snowflakes pouring down a semi-deserted hotel hall a few meters away from a stretch of the Bosnian coastline, a magician seeks a volunteer for the obligatory sawing a body in half trick. Begrudgingly, an insouciant look that belies an endless and soul-crushing journey behind her, Alma (Sara Luna Zorić) lends her teenage self to the experiment. The box is sealed; the magician taps around it; and a blade slices the silence with a metallic clang. Alma’s body is chopped in half, and the room erupts in an applause.
With its limbs protruding into the frame from unseen bodies — hands, feet, fingers sticking out as severed roots — Ena Sendijarević’s gorgeous debut feature Take Me Somewhere Nice is a tale of fractured identities, a Bildungsroman that zeroes in on a teenage girl traversing two irreconcilable worlds, each demanding her undivided allegiance, none...
With its limbs protruding into the frame from unseen bodies — hands, feet, fingers sticking out as severed roots — Ena Sendijarević’s gorgeous debut feature Take Me Somewhere Nice is a tale of fractured identities, a Bildungsroman that zeroes in on a teenage girl traversing two irreconcilable worlds, each demanding her undivided allegiance, none...
- 1/28/2019
- by Leonardo Goi
- The Film Stage
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