MOVIE REVIEW : A LOSS OF INNOCENCE IN ‘RAINBIRDS’

In “A Flight of Rainbirds” (at the Monica 4-Plex), a splendid Dutch-made serious comedy, a man awakens from a violent nightmare in which he has struggled hopelessly to climb his way out of hell. Upon awakening, he envisions a rakish-looking alter ego, who tells him that he will die if he doesn’t lose his virginity within a week.

Adapted by the sensitive and gifted young writer-director Ate De Jong from Maarten ‘t Hart’s somewhat autobiographical novel, “A Flight of Rainbirds” allows us to come to understand how a healthy, handsome, though klutzy, heterosexual male could still be in a state of sexual innocence at the of 34. What gives “A Flight of Rainbirds” its depth is its respect for Maarten’s individuality.

The film provides a personal triumph for its star, Jeroen Krabbe, who played the devil-may-care aristocrat of “Soldier of Orange,” the ruthless bisexual of “The Fourth Man” and the bullying roomer of “Turtle Diary.”

As our hero, Maarten, begins his clumsy pursuit of the opposite sex, he flashes back to his childhood on the remote farm and vineyard where he still lives with his recently widowed mother (Marijke Merckens). Now near death from cancer, she is concerned that her only son, a scientist, has never married. Gradually, we see how the isolation of his childhood, coupled with the harsh Calvinism of his father, has led him to become attached to his mother, to whom he is now bound closer than ever.

The film is not afraid to be a serious and tender evocation of a love between mother and son. However, as “Rainbirds” progresses from one poignant sequence to the next, it becomes clear that not until his mother dies will he be truly free.

The contradiction deep within the Northern European psyche is also exemplified by Maarten’s predicament. On the one hand, he is pressured to conform to a sophisticated Old World image of free love; on the other he is a product of a highly inhibiting, guilt-inducing puritanical tradition.

The very model of the literary adaptation, “A Flight of Rainbirds” presents people as real and alive, never mere conceits. Yet in a completely understated way De Jong has been able to make effective use of repeated motifs: the way a young woman brushes her hair captivates Maarten because it was the way his mother brushed hers when he was a child. Beautiful, sensitive, original and tough-minded, “A Flight of Rainbirds” (Times-rated Mature for adult themes and situations) is itself captivating.