One of the Netherlands's most adventurous
filmmakers, Alex van Warmerdam
specializes in creepy, fractured riffs on
folk tales, and acerbic, surreal analyses of
contemporary European society. His latest,
Borgman, opens with a tribe of strange
nomads being driven from their elaborate
network of underground shelters. Their
ostensible leader, Borgman (Jan Bijvoet),
approaches an upper-middle-class home
and aggressively begs for money. The infuriated
husband, Richard (Jeroen Perceval),
responds by beating the stranger senseless
in front of his appalled wife, Marina
(Hadewych Minis). Soon after, Borgman
infiltrates their lives — and Marina's
dreams — while Richard begins exhibiting
his own increasingly erratic and violent
behaviour. Then, Borgman's associates
begin circling the house.
While somewhat related to the recent
home invasion sub-genre,
Borgman is primarily
about the tensions, both economic
and racial, inherent in modern-day society —
especially the psychosexual tensions
that characterize the bourgeoisie. Richard
can't help but look at his wife or his children
as his property. Marina initially seems
quite happy with her function as a trophy
mother, but the moment the facade starts to crack she's more than willing to consider
the better offer.
Driving the narrative arc and intensifying
the disturbing tone is van Warmerdam's
refusal to place his characters morally. The
open-ended nature of his allegory makes it
feel all the more contemporary and unsettling,
and therefore genuinely worthy of
that overused term, Kafkaesque.
