SnoopyStyle
In the present day, successful winemaker Frank de Rooy dies and three women are requested at his funeral. In 1953, a KLM flight breaks a record traveling from London to Christchurch. Frank meets Ada van Holland, Esther Cahn, and Marjorie Mullin who are three of the brides on their way to New Zealand. Frank lost his family in colonial Indonesia during the war. He falls for country girl Ada but she's already married by proxy to Calvinist Derk Visser. She goes on to live a loveless marriage in a bunker having several children. The only passion is the exchange of letters with Frank until he discovers them. Esther is an independent Jewish woman after losing everyone in the Holocaust. She refuses to live with ghosts from the past and charges forward making a career as a successful fashion designer. Marjorie marries Hans Doorman. After Esther gives birth, Marjorie adopts the baby as her own.It's an old-fashion romantic melodrama. Ada's quiet suffering is devastating and her life is worthy of any pulp romance. This is all very pulpy with Marjorie and Esther. The movie should stop flashing forward to the modern era so much. It should have stopped after Rutger Hauer died. Every time it goes modern, the movie grinds to a halt. The modern era should be tiny bookends. Otherwise, this is a good old fashion melodrama if one is inclined towards such things.
courtesyflushblush
Remember the old lady in Atonement? What if she led her life without regrets? What if she laid it all on the line before it was too late, before her sister died, before she grew old? Like the Oscar winning film, Bride Flight is about elders (we get three here) reflecting on their past when they reconvene at a funeral. The central elder, Ada, had a choice to make in her youth to either follow Frank (an Adonis of men, perhaps too good to be true, every woman's fantasy) or follow her husband Derk (essentially a Jerk, but represents stability, religion, and order). Ada chose to go with Derk, but in the third act of the movie she had an opportunity to undo her mistake. Where Atonement was about living with regret and sadness, Bride Flight is about living with regret, and then doing something about it. Ada runs off with Frank and puts it all on the line. This film should not go underneath the radar because it's not only a case study of human potential, but also a true cinematic feat.
labrang
After reading the previous comments from (mostly) Dutch viewers I feel I have to add some more. This movie has to be seen with the historic background in mind : early 50's in post-war Holland, the recent loss of Indonesia as colony, (war) broken families, and a recent flood disaster. There are a few references to these events. In this time a lot of Dutchies migrated to New Zealand, Australia, Canada and the USA (incl. my relatives). Young people wanting a new start, after the WW-II war. Some of them were born and raised in Indonesia, suffered from the Japanese camps, and when they were forced to relocate to post-war Netherlands after Indonesia's independence the Netherlands was like an unknown country for them. This movie's Frank is an example of such a young man. Lost and looking out for a new life, with no attachments to his "mothercountry".All main characters have their personal baggage from these tragic events they experienced during their young years. Marjorie is a little of an exception to this. Which translates in the plot. The storyline really tells subtly and in complexity how this generation walked away from their past, leave it behind and looking out for a prosperous future in their chosen promised land. I give this movie an 8 out of 10. Production is solid, as is the acting. Scenery adds up to this feeling of "promised land".
pietterbeek
The first twenty minutes I wondered which way this film was going, in more than one sense. The acting was not great, the dialogues where not convincing, the scenes in the plane where clumsy and Dutch international movie star Rutger Hauer's character died not long after the beginning. Honestly, with a few exceptions I am not very impressed by the Dutch cinema, was this another Dutch movie? Then the story started to roll and got me more in its grip. The acting was getting better, sometimes real good. What I think is a pity, is that the storyline is filled with flash forwards that do not add much to the story, which is all about the life of Dutch immigrants in New Zealand in 1953 and farther. The film could have been much better if the story was told chronologically and ended somewhere in the 70's or 80's. Now there are two actors for each character, and for me, also knowing the old respectable actors from the old days, this was sometimes quite disturbing. I found it hard to intermingle a character, I saw Willeke van Ammelrooy, not the character that grew old and looked little alike with the younger woman she once had been in the film. I had strongly the impression that the known actors where mostly used to put known names on the billboards. Their parts are relatively small and of little importance for the basic line of the story.
AD
