A bleakly funny Dutch drama about a tortuous father-son relationship, Three Days of Fish is a wry, tender, tragicomic gem. Finding both deadpan humour and inconsolable sadness in family tensions that will feel painfully relatable to many viewers, writer-director Peter Hoogendoorn’s semi-autobiographical second feature calls to mind the bittersweet emotional terrain of Alexander Payne at times. The theme may be familiar, the plot disjointed, and the Dutch-language format a potential barrier to wider international audiences, but a droll script and outstanding lead performances will both be strong selling points. The film has its festival world premiere this weekend in the main Crystal Globe competition at Karlovy Vary.
Three Days of Fish takes place in Rotterdam, which Hoogendoorn and his team frame in handsome monochrome on mostly hand-held camera, lending it a classic indie-movie look. Flying in from his current home in Portugal for his annual visit home, 65-year-old retired bus mechanic Gerrie Molendijk (Ton Kas) reconnects with family and friends, notably his 45-year-old biological son Dick (Guido Pollemans) and stepdaughter Nadia (Neidi Dos Santos Livramento), the child of his second wife Rosa, who hails from Cape Verde in West Africa.
While in Rotterdam, Gerrie also plans to book some health check-ups and settle a few administrative issues. One of these involves severing his ties with the Netherlands altogether and emigrating fully to Portugal. But he is wary of revealing this to Dick, who Gerrie rightly suspects will take the news as further proof of his father’s ongoing rejection.
A sullen middle-aged man-child with money problems and depression issues, Dick initially comes across as a needy, sulky, short-tempered diva. But his volatile mood swings become easier to forgive as Hoogendoorn fills in his back story. Raised by a taciturn father who finds it difficult to express emotion, who later abandoned him for a new life with another family, it is perhaps inevitable that Dick is walking wounded, craving a huge backlog of paternal validation that is never going to arrive.
Crafted with economy and wit, Three Days of Fish mostly plays as a two-hander between Gerrie and Dick, two repressed men whose stilted interactions and unresolved tensions are painful to witness, but beautifully observed. Preferring to capture what he calls “liminal moments” rather than major dramatic events, Hoogendoorn’s episodic series of domestic vignettes reveals a lot about the duo’s fraught relationship without laying it out explicitly. Both leads give finely grained performances, full of fraught silences and stifled sighs.
An encounter with Gerrie’s sickly brother Piet, who seems to love his pet pigeons more than his wife, is rich in comic melancholy. Likewise an awkward visit to the recently bereaved widow of one of Gerrie’s former colleague, who appears to have moved on swiftly, taking in a younger lover with a mountainous body-builder physique. A pilgrimage to the old family home, the last place Dick remembers being happy, also allows for a welcome hint of shared tenderness.
There is latent love and empathy between these two emotionally stunted, socially inept men, if only they could articulate it. But most of their clumsy attempts to connect are soured by low-level irritation, impatience and inconsolable resentment. The final blow comes during a solemn visit to the grave of Gerrie’s first wife, Dick’s mother, where a jolting shock awaits them. The aftermath of this event crackles with blame, shame and bitter recrimination, though naturally nobody mentions these feelings, letting them hang in the air like stormclouds.
If Three Days of Fish was an actual Alexander Payne film instead of a distant European cousin, it would likely have concluded with a cathartic showdown or a heart-warming group hug. But Hoogendoorn takes the more glumly authentic route, suggesting that people rarely change and wounds never really heal. He ends with excruciating farewell scene that feels utterly banal on one level, but still achingly sad and painful believable. This is a modesty scaled story, local and personal in feel, but its emotional hinterland runs wide and deep.
Director, screenwriter: Peter Hoogendoorn
Cast: Ton Kas, Guido Pollemans, Neidi Dos Santos Livramento, Addison Dos Reis, Line Pilet
Cinematography: Gregg Telussa
Editing: Annelotte Medema
Music: Christiaan Verbeek
Producer: Stienette Bosklopper
Production companies: Circe Films (NL), Kaap Holland Film (NL), A Private View (NL), NTR (NL)
Venue: Karlovy Vary International Film Festival (Crystal Globe competition)
World sales: Heretic
In Dutch
85 minutes
