HEMEL

Netherlands, 2012, 80 minutes, Colour.

Hanna Hoekstra, Hans Dagelet.

Directed by Sacha Polak.

A brief Dutch film focusing on sexuality, promiscuity, father daughter relationships. It runs for only 80 minutes.

The title, which means “Heaven”, is actually the name of the central protagonist. The film opens with her involved in sexual activity, frankly visualised, and the audience soon learning that she regularly has stands with men, the audience seeing one of the men trying to be tender after the intercourse but her rejecting this.

It emerges that she is very close to her father, a widower, with a flair for younger women, an auctioneer. The pair have been close since her childhood, which looks, sometimes, uncomfortably close – dramatised in a scene with a visit to the opera.

Hemel also visits her ex-stepbrother, a man with rather strict Protestant principles upset after a violent episode..

When her father takes up with a woman, there are tensions within the relationship. Hemel continues, having a relationship with a married man. And discussions with him.

This film could be compared with 99 Moons, a Swiss film about a woman with sexual problems and identity.