Marieke and the Men

For twelve years now, Marieke (Hande Kodja) has lived alone with her mother Jeanne (Barbara Sarafian). Both women are still struggling with the suicide of Marieke's father after all these years. Jeanne has banished any memory of her husband from her life; there are no photos or other mementos anywhere. Marieke, now 20, on the other hand, has developed extreme fears of commitment. Her longing for affection, tenderness and warmth, which is denied her by Jeanne, the young woman seeks in affairs with older men. Age and death seem to exert a special fascination on Marieke. When the charming Jacoby (Jan Decleir), who was once very good friends with Marieke's father, appears and seeks contact with the young woman, it seems at first to be just another of her affairs. But Jacoby's appearance forces Marieke to confront her past and repressed details about her father's death, and to accept a truth she has been running from for so long...

Marieke and the Men is a quiet drama that tells a story that is very sensitive and without the possible voyeurism that Marieke's sexual affairs in particular would have offered, a story that is poignant in its simplicity. While Sophie Schoukens succeeds very well in building up a certain erotic tension in her feature debut, she discharges it in glances and small moments of quiet tenderness rather than in overly explicit sex scenes. As a result, these moments don't distract too much from the characters, whose development is the real focus of the story. Watching the wall Marieke has built up around herself over all these years come tumbling down is of an intensity one wouldn't really have expected from such a quiet film.

This is not only due to Schoukens' sensitive staging, but primarily to the great acting of Hande Kodja, who expresses an emotional range with greatly reduced facial expressions that many an actor could only dream of. Particularly in the last third, it is Kodja's performance that gives the action its very special emotional power.

An engaging imagery, the restrainedly constructed dramaturgy and the good actors make Marieke and the Men a stirring insight into the psyche of a young woman shattered by a traumatic childhood experience. For those who appreciate sophisticated, slow and quietly told program cinema fare, this little arthouse gem can be warmly recommended. Worth seeing

An article by Frankfurt-Tipp