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ANTONIA'S LINE: Drama. Starring Willeke van Ammelrooy, Els Dottermans and Veerle van Overloop. Directed and written by Marleen Gorris. (Unrated. 105 minutes. In Dutch with English subtitles. At the Embarcadero, Act in Berkeley, Aquarius in Palo Alto, Camera 3 in San Jose and Sequoia in Mill Valley.)
In her 1982 drama, "A Question of Silence," Dutch film maker Marleen Gorris told a story of a woman shopkeeper and two customers who take it upon themselves to murder a man. The movie captured a certain sexual/political zeitgeist, suggesting that turnabout was inevitable after eons of male oppression, and divided audiences along gender lines.
In her newest, "Antonia's Line," which opens today at Bay Area theaters and yesterday won an Oscar nomination for foreign- language film, Gorris takes a major leap in style and in scope, but seems unwilling to fully retire the male-bashing.
Centered around the tough, unsentimental Antonia (Willeke van Ammelrooy), and bridging a 50- year span in her life, "Antonia's Line" takes place in the Dutch countryside and examines the long, peculiar arc of a multigenerational, matriarchal farm family. The movie is a weird brew: a mixture of feminist self-reliance, ditch-the-dudes hostility and coy, twinkling schmaltz.
Gorris starts off on shaky ground when she introduces Antonia, a stoic, independent woman who hears that her mother is dying and returns to the eccentric, insular village of her birth. Sarcastic and passionless, Antonia brings along her teenage daughter, Danielle (Els Dottermans), and explains as they stroll through the recently liberated village (World War II has just ended) the bizarre characters who populate the town.
LOONY LIPS
Loony Lips (Jan Steen), the jug- eared village simpleton, is one of the gallery, as are Mad Madonna (Catherine Ten Bruggencate), a Catholic who howls at the moon because she can't be with her Protestant lover (Paul Kooij); mournful philosopher Crooked Fingers (Mil Seghers); DeeDee (Marina De Graaf), the retarded daughter of a brutal landowner (Jakob Beks); and the sweet, widowed farmer Bas (Jan Decleir) who worships Antonia and is still treated as a village "newcomer" after 20 years.
When her lunatic mother finally dies, Antonia cracks wise at the funeral ("It's all a load of rubbish")
and proceeds to settle in, with little enthusiasm, to the farm she inherits. "Still as mean as a wasp and ugly, too," a village lout says when she enters a local saloon -- an assessment that's not easily disputed.
It's imperative in a film such as "Antonia's Line," which tracks a family over several decades, to feel an emotional link with the characters. Antonia is obviously our point person here, but she's such a sour pickle that you never get to ease into her story. Instead, you cringe a little every time she's on screen.
When farmer Bas comes to Antonia with his heart in hand, and clumsily proposes marriage, she brushes him off. When her daughter decides to get pregnant without bothering to marry, Antonia not only endorses her decision, but escorts her to the city to find a suitable sperm-bearer.
Who needs a man dirtying up the house, after all? And fathers? Who says they're necessary to a family unit? "What the eye doesn't see," Antonia offers, "the heart doesn't grieve about."
Does Gorris really believe this rubbish? The goal of "Antonia's Line," I'd assume, is to offer an alternative to the standard, male- centered family sagas that reduce women to salty waffle flippers and careworn brood mares. Gorris deconstructs the formula and shows us, over four generations, a line of strong, self-determining icons who humor the occasional man but in general rest easier in the absence of testosterone.
Danielle becomes a lesbian by taking up with her daughter Therese's tutor (Elsie De Brauw). Therese (played at different stages by Carolien Spoor, Esther Vriesendorp and Veerle Van Overloop) becomes a brilliant mathematician and musician, is raped as a teenag er and avenged by her gun-toting grandma.
Sarah, the great-granddaughter who narrates the film in flashback, is a red-headed wonder who may be Gorris' closest alter ego: She's the one who observes and interprets the matriarchy, and offers a variety of bromides about the cyclical nature of time ("sometimes it tears through life like a vulture in search of prey").
ANTI-MALE ORNERINESS
"Antonia's Line," which won the top audience prize at the Toronto Film Festival, is probably bound to divide audiences, just as "A Question of Silence" did.
For those who favor stories of women thriving outside a male society, and willing to forgive an odd mix of schmaltz and anti-male orneriness, then I say go ahead.
