THE RESURRECTION OF A BASTARD (Guido van Driel). 89 minutes. Subtitled. Opens Friday (March 27). Rating: NNNN
Watch online: iTunes
Remember the name Guido van Driel. The bold Dutch director makes an auspicious debut with The Resurrection Of A Bastard, a brutally violent and haunting crime movie adapted from his own graphic novel.
Yorick van Wageningen (the rapist social worker in David Fincher’s Dragon Tattoo) is riveting as Ronnie, a psychopathic mob henchman who at one point uses a vacuum cleaner to relieve a victim of his eye. After surviving an attempt on his life, Ronnie is a changed man, seemingly frightened by his former self. His story eventually intersects with that of a young black refugee (Goua Robert Grovogui ) escaping a tragic past to begin a new life in the Netherlands.
Van Driel’s work recalls early Christian Petzold, the German director who mines Hitchcockian genre tropes for national allegories. (Petzold’s masterpiece, Phoenix, opens in May.)
Slyly dealing with anti-immigration feeling and Islamophobia in the Netherlands, the film mixes Tarantino-esque violence with dreamlike, impressionistic gestures, contemplating hate, fear and regret.
