Review of Cloaca

Cloaca (2003 TV Movie)
10/10
One of the best Dutch movies ever (if not, THE best)
5 November 2003
The play "Cloaca" was, in the year 2002, one of the most succesful plays of that year. And because of the fact that in Holland, we don't have lots of issues we want to film, 'they' decided to make a movie of "Cloaca", with the same (great) actors as in th play. 'They' succeeded. The movie is one of the best Dutch movies ever, if not THE best, I'm still thinking of calling it that. The story is about a group of men, who are all 40 years old. Back when they were students, they were best friends, but after several years, the relation between these men went down hill. One of the guys, Pieter (Pierre Bokma), has a problem, and to solve this problem he needs the help of his friends, in special the help of Tom (Peter Blok) while he is a lawyer. But Tom en his two other friends Joep (Gijs Scholten van Aschat), who is running for minister, and Maarten (Jaap Spijkers), a director, have enough problems for themselves. And the only thing they can focuse on, is there own problem. This delivers some great scenes, like the one in which Maarten is trying to tell Joep that he had sex with his 18 year old daughter, when they were preparing Maarten's latest play. When Joep enters the room, he tells Maarten how wonderful he liked the play, gives Maarten a hug and gives him no chance to tell his story.

This is typical for this movie; no one listens to the other, and this is brilliantly played by the best actors we have in Holland. Gijs Scholten van Aschat (who had the chance to play the raper in Lars von Triers "Dogville", but didn't do it because he wanted to make "Cloaca") plays Joep on a wonderfull way, and also the other die hard theater actors Pierre Bokma, Peter Blok and Jaap Spijkers give a fantastic performance. If you like good acting: GO SEE THIS ONE!!!
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