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Jeroen Krabbe's debut feature paints an intimate portrait of a young girl, Chaja, who having accepted the position of nanny within an Hassidic household, struggles to come to terms with a lifestyle and set of values alien to her own.
Shot in the heavily orthodox Jewish quarter of Antwerp, with interiors shot in Amsterdam, the US/European co-production was produced by Ate de Jong (director of Drop Dead Fred). "One of the most surprising things about the film," explains de Jong, "was that everybody expected Jeroen to be essentially an actors' director but he exhibited an astonishing technical ability as well. Not only is Jeroen a very experienced actor who has obviously kept his eyes open all of these years but he is an accomplished painter with a very strong visual sense."
Krabbe collaborated with DoP Walther van den Ende to design a mise-en-scene of painterly references, most notably references to Vermeer, to illustrate the pious orthodoxy of the film's setting.
"He was very economical for a first-time director," de Jong continues, "which is gratifying. At first, people's reaction was, 'Oh God, another actor who wants to direct' but now those same people recognise a genuine directing talent. The film is ambitious, and maybe therefore it was originally perceived as having less commercial potential - but we thought why not. We wanted the freedom to make the film we wanted. It was subsidised. Jeroen certainly didn't need the money. There was obviously never that much financial risk. So we granted ourselves a new freedom and what happened? We ended up making a film more commercial than we thought possible - a strange paradox."
Nicholas Cunningham

Synopsis

The directorial debut of Jeroen Krabbé leads us into a world that is doubly strange. For one thing, his moving drama takes place in the 70s. But he also contrasts the universe inhabited by the young Jewish woman Chaja from Antwerp, which is characterised by free love and student revolt, with the strict lifestyle of orthodox Hasidic Jews like the married Kalmans. Chaja's parents are concentration camp survivors whose experience has overshadowed family life: in an Antwerp that has changed completely since then, her father keeps searching for the suitcases he used for burying the family's possessions before their escape. In her relationship with the seemingly dumb little Simcha Kalman (Adam Monty), nanny Chaja develops an understanding of her identity and her own parents' history. But conflicts keep arising between the dogmatic Mr Kalman and the young student  A plea for tolerance and a sensitive handling of the way victims can repress the Holocaust.

 (Dir): Jeroen Krabbé (Scr): Edwin de Vries nach dem Roman Twee Koffers Vol von Carl Friedman (Cast): Laura Fraser, Isabella Rossellini, Maximilian Schell, Marianne Sägebrecht, Jeroen Krabbé (Running time): 93 Minutes