Hivos Tiger Awards Competition screening - review - FAREWELL TO THE MOON by Dick Tuinder

Set in the early 1970s, from the glory days of the landing on the moon to the disenchantment of the Vietnam War, the inhabitants of Dutch apartment flat get involved in intertwining and intricate romantic predicaments. A content married couple with kids is split up by an eccentric female artist living next door to them, who lures the husband into infidelity. All the while, another neighbour whose husband has been gone a long time becomes the object of desire of a young boy experiencing his sexual awakening. 

 

Tuinder’s gloriously soap operatic chronicle has a sharp wit and a sense of humour, which nevertheless remains quite tasteful and does not disregard a portrayal of adult childishness, frustration, vulnerability and imperfection. In fact, one of the flaws of the film is its lack of a predominantly likeable character. However, this doesn’t seem to get in the way of the screenplay’s intelligence not only in orchestrating complicated intricate tales of matters of the heart in a well balanced way, but also reveals a cohesion with its place and time that makes Farewell to the Moon all the more interesting. 

 

For instance, one of the most interesting elements of the film is found in the way in which a TV news bulletin can often be heard in the background, and creates interesting psychological parallels with the actions undertaken by the characters. They, in fact, seem to become chess pieces on an ever changing board of time of evolution in the socio-political landscape that treasures impatience and promotes it widely by imposing it on ordinary people’s perspective and individual viewpoints of life. In other words, this is a film disguised as conventional which, nevertheless is an example of a cinematic ‘onion’, with layers upon layers of underlying mysteries and psychological enigmas rendered precious also by Tuinder’s ‘devil in the details’ approach. Such as the kimono wearing man who has forsaken his family life and recalls the lonely, troubled and even slightly incompetent emperors of Kurosawa’s films, or the lonely housewife who recalls Mrs. Robinson of The Graduate. 

 

Adding to the appeal, is the great visual style that, with its use of warm artificial lighting, sometimes makes the film feel dreamlike, or perhaps dreamt up by one of the frustrated characters in the play. In fact, the cinematography adds a sexual charge to the piece that completes the film’s sense of humour and ordinary drama. 

 

Farewell to the Moon, already at the start of the festival, already looks to be one of the event’s quiet gems or hidden treasures because of its competent direction and a smart cohesion of story and setting as well as a surprisingly fresh take on the theme of desire, love and even lust.

 

 

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43rd IFFR - Interview with filmmaker Dick Tuinder on FAREWELL TO THE MOON 

 

 

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