The recent Netherlands Film Festival opening film is a very loose adaptation of the eponymous bestseller by Surinamese novelist Cynthia McLeod (daughter of independent Suriname’s first president, Johan Ferrier), and is no doubt well intentioned, though its tendency to foreground a dominantly white perspective doesn’t jive with its choice of a black narrator (which is different from the book). Africa-born, Netherlands-based director Jean van de Velde, whose Cannes-selected The Silent Army, about African child soldiers, suffered from similar point-of-view problems, at least manages to get an juicy lead performance out of young actress Gaite Jansen (Paul Verhoeven’s Tricked), who impressively goes all out in embodying the porcelain-skinned spitfire of privilege that’s the tale’s true protagonist.
