30/01/2009

The feature debut of Noud Heerkens, Last Conversation, premiered at the Rotterdam Film Festival, which is heading into its closing weekend. The astonishing film was shot in one take with 25 cameras rigged to the exterior of a car.

It is a mystery why this formally inventive and astonishingly well-acted piece is not part of the Bright Future: Tiger Awards Competition this year (there is no Dutch film in the Competition line-up of the section).

The 47-year-old queen of Dutch acting, Johanna ter Steege – still most famous for her EFA-winning role in George Sluizer’s The Vanishing – stars in this one-sided telephone conversation that takes places entirely in and around the Jaguar XJS of her character Anne.

Anne receives a call from the married man who has just dumped her, and while she talks to him, she drives through what looks like eastern Belgium (her character is based in Brussels).

The virtuosity of the screenplay, by the director and Jacqueline Eskamp, is that the one-sided conversation – the other voice is muffled – plays like both a mystery, since important parts of the dialogue are missing, and an intriguing opportunity to focus solely on one character and one side of the story.

Though shot in one take with ter Steege actually driving the car, the set-up with the 25 cameras and fluid editing by Merel Notten make for a naturally flowing narrative rather than a flashy gimmick.

The film was produced by Holland Harbour Productions with financial backing from the Dutch Film Fund. It will be released in the Netherlands by Filmmuseum Distributie in September.