Lucia de B. (2014) Reviews

• True story told sober but chillingly.

  imdb-jeroen2014-04-09

  This movie tells the true story of a nurse who was innocently accused of being a serial killer of helpless patients. We see the machinery that leads to her conviction, not only motivated by an honest search for truth, but also by vanity an opportunism. We see how the main character and her relatives suffer under her being imprisoned and being falsely accused. We see how even hard evidence of her innocence is put aside in something like a mass-hysteria. And we see how, after years of struggle, the accused is finally set free. This case got such great attention in Dutch media that everyone knows the outcome, yet the movie is exciting and engaging. Everything is filmed in a sober, modest fashion, the drama in the movie coming mainly from the chilling story itself and not from extra fancy plot lines or effects. And of course some intense acting, especially by the main character, who withstood the temptation to play a 'nice' woman, but instead portrays a woman that's not easily likable at first. That Lucia grows on you, and in the end has all the viewers sympathy (or at least all mine) is a beautiful achievement.

  More

• Too stylish and too restrained

  avzwam2014-10-11

  Of another Dutch film which I reviewed called De poel, I said that it was very much done in the style of American remakes of Japanese horror films. Lucia de B. seems more or less to be done in the style of English detectives. The movie aims to show the injustice and to make you feel the emotions that Lucia went through but the movie is done in such a way that I ended up looking from a distance at a stylish movie. Sure it has colors which are sombre when she's in jail and colors which are vivid when she's freed in the end but that's really not enough. OK, there's (amongst a few other shots) a rotating shot which fades to black after she's vomited in the toilet but that too is done in such a stylish fashion... It's like a shot from a David Lynch movie. It's not what works for this story in my opinion. The way it portrays police officers and some of the people who worked with Lucia in the hospital is really, really awful. These characters are like villains the way you see them in the movies. I also think it needed a director who was angrier (or one who was more able to express or capture their anger on the screen) in order to make it more poignant as I feel it's still too clinical now.

  More