First Hit: A satisfying, sad, and wonderful story of love and its complications.
On a historic post WWII DC 6 flight from Netherlands to New Zealand, a young man Frank (played by Waldemar Torenstra) is sitting in the same row as Ada (played by Karina Smulders). One look from each of them and they know and you know there is chemistry. Perfect.
On screen romances often times don’t work and this one is one of those that work. The film begins with old Frank (the elder played by Rutger Hauer) tasting wine from a barrel on his vineyard and with the joy of yet another great wine living in his heart, he dies while driving back to his home.
We are then taken back to the young Frank and his row mate sneaking longing looks at each other. On the plane are two other women sitting together, across the aisle, and two rows up from them. Esther (played by Anna Drijver) and Marjorie (played by Elise Schaap) are on their way to New Zealand to marry their fiancés, as is Ada.
Marjorie is outgoing, creative and full of vim and vigor. She flirts with Frank and the other men on the plane and it seems that she is masking a dark sorrow especially when she lights up her ever present cigarette. Esther is anxious to start her life and create a family with youthful enthusiasm and naivety.
Ada is quiet and is a farm girl who seems a little afraid of this next step. During the rocky plane ride, Ada and Frank find themselves holding each other as a way to soothe her anxiousness. On one of their stops Frank and Ada have a passionate kiss. Ada then tells Frank that she is marrying not for love but because she is pregnant with her fiancés child which was conceived while she was giving him comfort.
Landing in New Zealand, each begins their new life. We follow each of them and their interaction over the years. This part of the film is intercut with the three women coming to older Frank’s funeral.
Each of the stories has joy and heartbreak but in the end there is their friendship.
Hauer has a very small part as older Frank, but I smiled when I saw him on the screen. He has great presence. Torenstra is wonderful as Frank the ladies’ man, farmer, winemaker, and friend. Smulders is fantastic as the woman who didn’t marry for love but did find love in her life with Frank. Their scenes together were knock-down engaging. Drijver was excellent as the more conservative of the bunch. She lets herself fall fully for her fiancé but becomes heartbroken when she cannot bear children of her own. Schaap is wonderful as the woman who wanted Frank, had him for one night, but it wasn’t a mutual lasting attraction. She despised her fiancé and was well cast as the woman making it through life and her self-imposed hardships on her own. Marieke van der Pol wrote a wonderfully insightful screenplay about how love and circumstances around love can be fleetingly permanent. Ben Sombogaart directed this film with love and a visualization of a how the story would evolve through time.
Overall: This was a very enjoyable film and definitely worth seeing.