There’s a lot of soap opera, and considerable sex, to “Bride Flight,” a Dutch romance involving three young women who emigrate from the Netherlands, battered and still weary from World II, to young, fresh New Zealand. Two have been married by proxy, the third is betrothed. All are looking for new lives. For some reason, they’re on a KLM plane involved in a race from London to Christchurch.
Actually, we begin about 50 years later with a funeral and a couple of other scenes so that Frank (Rutger Hauer), a successful winery owner, can die. Then we flash back to the plane, its propellers whining through the clouds.
On the plane, which conveniently goes through some bad weather, we meet Esther (Anna Drijver), dark and sultry, with ambition to be a clothing designer and who lost her entire Jewish family to the Nazis; Marjorie (Elise Schaap), pretty and blonde, who wants to have a lot of children; and Ada (Karina Smulders), wide-eyed and rather fixated on a handsome young man who is seated among the girls. She’d be innocent if she had not met her husband to be and, in a desire to comfort him, became pregnant. This is a film with a lot of pregnant moments.
Oh, of course. The handsome young man is Frank (now played by Waldemar Torenstra). He wants to be a farmer.
The film, which jumps back and forth between 1953, 1963 and the present, gives a youthful New Zealand some of the feeling of the American West, and it shows the beauty of the country to great advantage. In their new land, Esther immediately dumps her fiancee because he wants her to be totally observant. Ada’s husband is a devout Christian but Ada is more pliable than Esther and is happy to rear children, at least for a while Marjorie and her husband seem a good match, but Marjorie has a miscarriage and cannot have more children. Waiting in the wings, however, is Esther, who is pregnant and who “gives” her child to Marjorie.
Eventually, we learn who the boy’s father is, but figuring it out is ridiculously easy, and Esther, driven by guilt, cannot take her eyes off her son when the families get together, which causes problems between her and Marjorie. And Marjorie’s husband.
Interestingly, a different set of actresses, of the appropriate ages, portray the three women in the contemporary scenes. Director Ben Sombogaart’s casting decision works, too.
Marieke van der Pol’s screenplay shows us interesting women in an interesting age. They obviously grew up under the German occupation of the Netherlands, but develop as women of character and interest. “Bride Flight” is rather long, but mostly interesting, though it does become rather predictable after a while. A pleasant film for a lazy summer afternoon.
Bride Flight opens today at the Plaza Frontenac
—Joe