JAMESON DUBLIN INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL

JAMESON DUBLIN INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 2014
SPECIAL PRESENTATION
SATURDAY 22ND FEBRUARY
‘an engrossing and original work’
The Hollywood Reporter
BORGMAN
Sat 22 Feb / Savoy 1 / 11am / 113 minutes
Writer-director: Alex van Warmerdam 2013 Netherlands/
Belgium/Denmark
Cast: Jan Bijvoet, Hadewych Minis, Jeroen Perceval
With the support of the Embassy of The Netherlands
in Ireland
Stitch together a Buñuelian satire of the bourgeoisie
with the enigmatic unease of a Michael Haneke
drama and the absurdist humour of Roy Andersson
and you begin to have the measure of Borgman,
an unsettling, blackly comic fable from veteran Dutch
director Alex van Warmerdam (Grimm, The Last Days
of Emma Blank).
A priest leads a hunting party in search of the title
character and his followers, who are hiding out in
an underground warren. Is Borgman (Jan Bijvoet)
a cult leader or the devil in disguise? He escapes
and makes his way to suburbia, knocking on doors
and politely asking if he might take a bath. Arrogant
television producer Richard (Jeroen Perceval) is so
incensed by his request and his manner that he
punches and kicks him to the ground. Later, his wife
Marina (Hadewych Minis) offers Borgman a bath,
food and a bed in their guest house. It is her good
intentions and complicity with their clandestine guest
that paves the way to a kind of hell.
Jan Bijvoet has some of the velvety-voiced
confidence of a Christoph Waltz. His ability to bring
out the malice lying dormant in the good citizens of
suburbia seems effortless. Jeroen Perceval is equally
impressive as a husband with a trigger-hair temper
and pressing anger management issues.
Allan Hunter
Screen International
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