De Illusionist

An older film critic's life is interrupted by an unexpected visitor.

A large train station, it might be anywhere in a big city. Waiting passengers, some are curiously observing each other, some are too much involved with their own petty problems to pay attention to anything else. Our man, self- assured, practically undresses some of the woman present with his eyes, at least as long as his wife is absent, trying to get them some coffee. A beauty in blue returns his challenging looks, he can hardly believe it's true. Obviously, it is his lucky day today. By the time his wife returns our man has experienced some astonishing things under the watchful eyes of the fellow passengers. And most probably he will be much more reserved next time he sees a beautiful blonde.

A woman gets off a train by mistake and finds herself stranded alone with a peculiar man who doesn't even speak her language.

Young people meet in the local pub and pretend a lot more than they are. Mostly their swanky conduct is touching and affecting. There is a lot of attention for the clothes, hair-dress, music and cars of the sixties. Some of the amateur-actors became later well-known Dutch actors and directors.

The movie takes the viewers along a day's life in an ordinary dutch cafe, with the life of the failed Gerard as the red line. The individualism of the 90's is cynically but very well depicted in some typical dutch characters.

A chance meeting between Nicolai and Nina, a friend from the past, makes Nicolai return to an abandoned hotel in which, many years ago, he experienced his only love, full of tragedy and an overwhelming feeling.

An acknowledged master of the short sans dialogue, Jos Stelling won a bundle of awards for THE WAITING ROOM at festivals in Holland, Russia, and Switzerland. And if you thought that richly inventive spoof of the leering macho in God?s Little Acre, the crowded waiting room of your local railway station, was one of the luniest Erotic Tales ever made, then buckle your seat belt for a ride down Life?s Great Battlefield: the expressway during rush hour! Take the boredom of the slow lane, add the spice of one-upmanship, top it off with a delightful girl-boy butting match, and what?s missing? A layover at the next gas station.

Late 16th century, persecuted protestantism and general dissatisfaction with the Catholic Habsburg rule in the Netherlands lead to large-scale plundering and vandalizing of churches, only harshening the Spanish Inquisition, sparkling the Eighty Years War.

The historical parable about a girl from the Flemish common people with folk motifs in the style of Brueghel and Bosch - love, violence, bloody scenes, ugly ...