Mimi Cave’s sophomore feature, Holland, takes us for a swim in a sea of twists, turns, and possibilities, only to make us watch as it later drowns in a pool of its blood.
Holland, set in the 2000s in the tulip-filled Michigander city of the same name, focuses on teacher Nancy Vandergroot (Nicole Kidman.) Nancy lives a quiet life with her optometrist husband, Fred (Matthew Macfadyen), and their son, Harry (an impressive for his age, Jude Hill.) Their picture-perfect life will soon take a turn when Nancy and amicable colleague and future love interest Dave (Gael García Bernal) become suspicious that Fred might be cheating on her. They set out to discover the truth, only to discover that the buried secrets are much deeper and darker than they seem.
With this stellar cast and promising premise, you might imagine that Holland sets up to be a film with a lot of potential, and, in all honesty, it is. Unfortunately, though, it drags on for the greater first half of the movie, flirting with melodrama but never quite going there and giving little room left to explore what could have been had it not spent the majority of its first two acts delaying the exhilarating part that the trailer sells us. However, once it picks up, it never slows down—but when it accelerates too abruptly, it becomes more confusing than anything else.
I’m not one to mind a slow setup, but let’s be real: the first significant clue comes in over an hour into the movie, which leaves about half an hour for the movie actually to tap into the thriller genre and less than ten minutes to wrap it up and give us a somewhat (un)satisfying conclusion. Needless to say, the second half feels rushed. In fact, the hour spent establishing the universe, while being improved by an incredible production design that keeps you very much involved in the story it’s telling, unravels so many threads that the rest of the movie fails to tie together by the end. In short, Andrew Sodroski’s script leaves you more perplexed than content with what just happened.
This is all the more frustrating when you know that Cave’s debut, Fresh, immediately set her to be one of the upcoming directors to keep an eye on. Holland doesn’t negate that her direction is one of the movie’s highlights, but it doesn’t live up to the bar she’s set for herself with her first feature.
Another highlight of the film has got to be the cast. Whether it’s Kidman wonderfully playing yet another woman unhappy in her marriage or Macfadyen’s quiet force growing and culminating in one intense scene that might haunt you forever. Gael García Bernal also delivers a strong performance; his chemistry with Kidman is undeniable. The movie makes too little use of its supporting cast, though, whether it be with comedy’s rising star Rachel Sennott’s one scene as Candy that leaves you wanting more or Lennon Parham’s Gwen, who, not unlike other background characters, is mainly used as a means to move the plot along instead of depicting her as fully fleshed-out human. In any case, the cast does its best with what it’s been given.
At times serious, at times humorous—and occasionally, though I suppose inadvertently, the very definition of camp—Holland truly feels like, while it’s based on a dull script, it is overflowing with good ideas, only to receive a sluggish execution. It may not be the movie of the year and probably will lack the rewatch factor, but despite its many flaws, it remains an enjoyable watch.
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