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| Images courtesy of Cult Epics |
Dutch protégé of Chantal Akerman and writer-director Marleen
Gorris, now in her seventies, burst onto the Netherlands film scene in 1982
with her crime drama A Question of Silence as a new distinctive,
provocative and daring voice in feminist cinema emerging in the country at the
time. The story of three women who
arbitrarily murder a man for being male, it both ignited controversy as well as
won the Golden Calf at the Netherlands’ Film Festival and cemented Gorris’
status as a new kind of feminist provocateur.
Much like her mentor Akerman’s Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce,
1080 Bruxelles, the voice behind the camera is a rebellious outcry against brutal
routines normally endured by women behind closed doors and sought to highlight
and perhaps change the direction of such hidden injustices.
Just two years later, she unveiled her second feature Broken
Mirrors, an even more provocative pot stirrer that highlighted the inner
workings of a sleazy Amsterdam brothel in addition to the unpunished crimes
that occur on their grounds. Despite
going on to win the 1985 Audience Award at the Netherlands Film Festival, the
film took a backseat to her debut critically with many feeling it to be a paler
imitation of its predecessor. Thanks to
a new 4K restoration of the original camera negative by boutique label Cult
Epics, best known for releasing Gerald Kargl’s Angst and the Nekromantik
movies, modern moviegoers as well as English speaking viewers now have a
chance to reassess Gorris’ second feature with a fresh pair of eyes and ears.
Released in Holland as Gebroken Spiegels and divided
into two parallel plotlines, Broken Mirrors zeroes in on a murky
Amsterdam brothel known as the Club Happy House and a group of unfortunate
women who have been kidnapped and forced into lives of sexual slavery by a
domineering pimp and madam. Amid the
ensemble two prostitutes, Diane (Lineke Rijxman) and Dora (Henriëtte Tol) start
talking more and more about rebelling against their captors and escaping to a
better, freer life. Meanwhile a young
housewife Bea (Edda Barends) is kidnapped by one of the brothel’s regular
clients who proceeds to starve the woman to death while taking photographs of
her and plastering them on the wall charting her demise. Playing out simultaneously, the two disparate
timelines involving the kidnapper and the rebellious escorts will invariably
clash in unexpected ways.
Picking up where A Question of Silence left off with
all the male characters in the film being either rapists or murderers, Broken
Mirrors in other hands could’ve easily been another grindhouse hunk of
exploitation smut reveling in filth and vermin.
But with Gorris’ nuanced and startlingly delicate handling of such grisly
fare, the film becomes far more engaging and informative than merely
repellent. While far from romanticizing
this ugly world, you come to care for these characters surviving within it and
their plight becomes our plight.
Moreover, when you’ve been relentlessly beaten and pummeled into the
ground, what else can you do but eventually strike back? Drawing a sharp parallel between the
exploitation of women physically as well as visually, juxtaposing the actions within
the brothel with that of the captor, Broken Mirrors becomes harrowing
and confrontational, culminating in an explosive climax that feels somehow
liberating for the characters and for those of us watching.
Visually speaking the 1.66:1 framed cinematography by Frans
Bromet captures this broad daylight netherworld of sex and murder with documentary
level of grittiness, brilliantly represented in the new 4K restoration. Contrasting the bright and colorful neon-soaked
interiors of the brothel with the colorless and dour walls of the makeshift
prison cell, the looks of both worlds and plotlines are differentiated just
enough that we can follow the simultaneous stories as they play out
onscreen. Equally striking is Lodewijk
De Boer’s mournful ultra minimalist electronic score which frankly sounds like
a handheld Casio being randomly strummed at.
Deliberately small and meek sounding, the score softly chirps and beeps
as the events described unfold, creating a soundscape that would make Richie
Hawtin blush.
It goes without saying the ensemble cast predominantly comprised
of actresses give their all to create an ensemble netherworld with its own
subset of rules and regulations, with all the male actors tasked with playing
lecherous creeps. Linek Rijxman as an
ordinary woman violently thrust into this Hellhole against her will who finds
the strength and courage to bark and bite back becomes the female heroine
audiences of both genders will rally behind with Henriëtte Tol playing an
excellent partner of sorts who befriends the unwilling new recruit who
eventually stands in solidarity with her against their mutual abusers.
Released in 1984, the film unfortunately was not met with
the same measure of critical adulation as her debut with some critics attesting
it lacked the ferocity of A Question of Silence while others felt its
message of female solidarity got lost in translation. As a result of the less than stellar
reception, Marleen Gorris did not make another film for six years until the
1990 film The Last Island, just five years before she would make her
most successful film of her career Antonia’s Line. Due to this, Broken Mirrors got lost
in the shuffle somewhere over the years, a wrong which has thankfully been
righted by Cult Epics. While still
perhaps not as successful or polarizing as its predecessor, Broken Mirrors nevertheless
still packs a punch with a message both tragic and timely in a film made by the
understudy of perhaps the greatest feminist director who ever lived.
--Andrew Kotwicki
