CHARACTER

• Starring Fedja van Huet.
• Directed by Mike van Diem.
• Rated R, with violence; running time 114 minutes
• With 10 as a must-see, Jack gives this film a 8

By Jack Garner
Staff film critic

(May 1, 1998) -- This year's Oscar-winning foreign film is about character -- who has it and who doesn't. It's also a dark but dynamic drama populated with at least three intriguing characters -- a father, mother and son entangled in hatred and resentment.

Appropriately, this compelling film is called Character.

A Dutch film set in the Rotterdam of the 1920s, Character has the moody, melodramatic feel of classic German expressionism films of that period. Though it's shot in color, the dominance of shadows and dingy dark shades of brown adds to the doom-laden atmosphere.

The tale could have come from Dickens, but is actually an adaptation of a 1938 Dutch novel by Ferdinand Bordewijk.

Character unfolds from the point of view of an aspiring young lawyer named Katadreuffe, played by Fedja van Huet, a talented actor who vaguely resembles Robert Downey Jr. As the film opens, he's accused of the murder of a much-feared and powerful bailiff named Dreverhaven (Jan Decleir).

Authorities soon discover Katadreuffe is the victim's illegitimate son, and the young man then tells them the story of his strange, unsettled relationship with his father. In the extended flashback, Dreverhaven is depicted in a brief, loveless affair with a housekeeper (Betty Schuurman), and Katadreuffe is the result.

The quiet, sternly resentful mother is left to raise the child. Dreverhaven offers assistance -- but no emotional support -- and she refuses the money. Katadreuffe grows up as a bright young man, filled with curiosity and intensely mixed feelings about his absent father. Eventually, as Katadreuffe first goes into business -- and fails -- and then enters the legal profession, he constantly bumps into the shadow of his father.

The tension builds toward the father-and-son confrontation that opens the film -- and is depicted in greater detail at the finale.

As written and directed by Mike van Diem, Character is an engrossing portrait of a disjointed, dysfunctional family torn by anger, misunderstanding and selfishness. Yet the ties that bind a parent and a child remain powerful, even as darker emotions assault them.

Character is an artful, fascinating melodrama in the classic mold. It certainly deserves its awards, and your attention.