Tirza- Dutch excellence

Tirza tells the story of Jörgen Hofmeester, a middle-aged man who is desperately looking for his missing daughter Tirza who has gone to Namibia with her Morrocan boyfriend and since then not contacted of her whereabouts or her present condition.

Hofmeester's elder daughter hates him and his divorced wife curses and insults him at every given moment. His prized daughter Tirza is his 'sun queen' as he amicably likes to call her, the apple of his eye who he raised by himself after his wife abandons the family. The elder daughter has moved away with her boyfriend and his wife now decides to come back into their lives.

Hofmeester disapproves of Tirza's new boyfriend of Arabic origin (Morrocon) named Choukri who Hofmeester names Mohammed Atta; after one of the 9/11 bombers.

Hofmeester decides to go to Namibia and find Tirza himself after calling her endlessly for many days to hear her voice-mail only, he also receives no email.

He meets a 9-year-old child prostitute named Kaiza who follows him everywhere and accompanies him around the city in search for Tirza. Kaiza represents the ugliness of our planet and the poor conditions of the third world countries where children run after foreigners or tourists asking them "Sir, you want company?"

The good:
Surely one of the best dramas to come from the Dutch cinema, I thought though that suspense or even perhaps thriller (to a small extent) and even crime must be added to the genre too as it is one of those movies that keeps you on interested and you cling onto you seat to know what's going to happen next. Although a drama; the director ensures a medium paced movement of one scene to another which does not bore at any point.

The editing of this drama somehow added a touch of thriller to it in some parts, the clever use of flashbacks and well-integrated ghost-like appearances by a younger Tirza further flesh out the backstory before the script to its main location that is Namibia.

Actors in this small country come from strong theater academies, and Tirza is a strong and powerful drama that almost missed it's foreign Oscar despite it's heavy acting and cinematography.
The cinematography by Gabor Szabo is magnificent to the core, the Namibian desert is a glorious beauty.

Tirza on the whole is is brilliantly constructed, unpredictable and unsettling.

The Director
Director Rudolf van den Berg's ambitious work has a natural flow to the book that it is adapted from; Arnon Grunberg's novel of the same title.
The movie is highly literary and philosophical in non-aesthetic and non-sentimental ways. Rudolf van den Berg delivers surrealism realistic in every moment of his main character's portrayal.

The Actor
Hofmeester is middle-aged, retired, sexually frustrated, divorced, left alone with bitter memories of his elder daughter and taunting ex-wife. He is empty inside and has nothing in his life except the love for his daughter Tirza, Aschat he director conveys every emotion, his deteriorating sanity in a credible way.

The depressed tale also has graphic depiction of sex exploring human psyche with a unexpected ending.

Verdict: 7/10


IMDB LINK

Cast
Gijs Scholten van Aschat - Jörgen
Sylvia Hoeks - Tirza
Johanna ter Steege - Alma
Abbey Hoes - Ibi
Titia Hoogendoorn - Ester
Nasrdin Dchar - Choukri
Keitumetse Matlabo - Kaisa