Matthew Macfadyen and Nicole Kidman star in the psychological thriller Holland. Photo: Supplied.
When a sudden, disruptive event dramatically shifts the dynamics of a relationship, causing a major emotional reaction, it becomes a turning point not only of complacency but suspicion and fear.
That’s precisely the impact Academy Award-winning Australian actress Nicole Kidman (The Hours, Moulin Rouge!) was striving to achieve with her role as Nancy Vandergroot in the psychological thriller Holland.
Kidman loved the aspects of the “many twists and turns”, and the excitement “when something comes in and sort of explodes!”. She also “didn’t know what was going to happen next”.
Nancy, who is a high school home economics teacher in Holland, Michigan, is married to Fred Vandergroot (Matthew Macfadyen, Succession, Deadpool & Wolverine), a successful optometrist, and is devoted to their 13-year-old son, Harry (Jude Hill, Belfast, A Haunting in Venice).
Ostensibly, this ideal suburban life gives way to troubled misgivings as Nancy feels like she’s “just existing”, not making the most of life as she should be. Then distrust begins to fester when she suspects Fred is having an affair.
Is her intuition working overtime as there’s no proof? But then she begins to wonder why he is going to more out-of-town conferences than would be likely for an optometrist. These frequent absences are the reason behind her turning to a fellow teacher, Dave Delgado (Gael García Bernal, The Motorcycle Diaries, Mozart in the Jungle), to help her and find out what Fred has been supposedly doing when he is presumably at these conferences.
He befriends her, but attraction develops between Nancy and Dave. She tells him that her “life is like carbon monoxide. It’s so sleepy and comfortable, I don’t even know that I’m suffocating.”
Mimi Cave directs this desirability factor, and teases with the comicality of it, the notion that the two people attempting to prove infidelity would themselves commit adultery. This angle, however, doesn’t go far enough. Nancy is one of those women who desire to be a perfect wife and mother, yet she conceals a certain mystery in her life. Kidman delivers an intelligent, hyper-performance.
As the truth is stealthily uncovered, Nancy finds out that things are much more intricate than she ever could have expected. Without giving too much away, Holland treads a fine line between wanting us to believe that Nancy’s suspicions are valid and leading us to think they are only in her imagination. As we weave our way through the questionable maze, the drama levels are slowly peeled away when contentment, misgiving and anxiety turn into a devastating reality.
A shattering point of high tension is realised on learning Fred is actually a serial killer who venerates his slayings by creating replicas of the victims’ homes in his eerie train set village in the basement of his home.
A recurring narrative technique throughout is the famed Tulip Time Festival. It follows a real tradition that takes place every year in Holland to honour the town’s Dutch heritage, with residents planting millions of tulips throughout the city and partaking in parades, dancing, concerts and tours.
While Holland is not a totally rewarding experience as a thriller, its redeeming features are the strong cast performances, a smart visual style and an intricate blend of elements to create an emotional mood and tone.
Andrew Sodroski (Manhunt) wrote the screenplay for this fictional story 13 years before the film was successfully produced.
Mimi Cave, who made her 2022 directorial debut with Fresh, has a distinctive style. It urges the audience to really evaluate the facts before them. She looks at it from a few different angles, finding an altered meaning or a dissimilar truth.
Finales with room for elucidation are the kind that Cave appreciates the most.
“This storyteller is giving me options of the truth,” she says. “It’s an engaging way to entertain people and keep them thinking about something.”
That will certainly be the case with the film’s “ambiguous and odd” conclusion.
Holland, directed by Mimi Cave, is streaming on AppleTV+
