Fresh was amazing – a subversive fun horror romp with the incredible talents of Daisy Edgar-Jones and Sebastian Stan. Such a stellar start for a debut film. Mimi Cave’s sophomore film Holland, however, is nowhere near as fresh. Her second feature film is bogged down by a screenplay that is dull, unimaginative and messy.
We’re brought into the world of Holland, Michigan, essentially suburban bliss with clogs, windmills and tulips. Nancy Vandergroot (Nicole Kidman) lives there with her husband Fred (Matthew Macfadyen) and their son Harry (Jude Hill). She’s a Home Economics teacher at the local school, Fred’s an optometrist with a thriving business – on the surface everything looks picture-perfect, but there’s the feel of something murky beneath. The problem is, the film waits too long to actually show us the dirt, and when it does, it wraps up in a way that’s confusing instead of impactful.
Nancy feels stuck and trapped in her life and marriage, but Holland doesn’t do the work to make us feel this suffocation. Macfadyen’s Fred is too placid to feel dangerous, and the lack of tension in his interactions with Nancy really hurts the film’s pacing. Kidman is of course the best thing about Holland. She’s acting her face off – she’s paranoid, manic and tries her best to telegraph Nancy’s interior despite being held back by the bland boundaries of the screenplay. There’s even this fun moment where she’s watching Mrs. Doubtfire and she makes this the most charming thing. Her name attached to this is probably why Holland even got picked up by Amazon.
Nancy’s confidante is fellow teacher Dave (Gael Garcia Bernal), though it becomes apparent that the two are more than just friends. There’s desire between them, but how can Nancy leave Fred when he has all the power in the relationship? There’s also Harry to consider, and Nancy worries about whether her choice to put herself first would cost her her son. Bizarrely, there’s no chemistry between Bernal and Kidman, maybe because Bernal’s character is so thinly sketched-out. I guess that’s on purpose given the ending, but much like it was in the movie Marmalade, shallow characters don’t hold much interest.
Nancy becomes convinced that Fred is up to something since he goes on work trips so frequently – why would a optometrist need to travel for work so much? – so the pair start to investigate him to find out what he gets up to on these trips. But none of these investigations are interesting, and there’s just not enough meat for the viewer to feel invested in what they find out. It’s a shame because we all know Macfadyen has the ability to play darker characters – the brief glimpse of that darkness was so promising – but Holland is so intent on burying all this in favour of a twist that holds no weight because of how uninteresting most of the film is.
I really wanted to like Holland since I do appreciate Cave’s visual style – she knows how to make a good looking picture. But a film is nothing without a good screenplay – it’s all wilted flowers here instead of bloody tulips. What a shame.
REVIEW SCORE: 2.5/5
