Cannes Review: Borgman (2013)

Cast: Jan Bijvoet, Hadewych Minis, Jeroen Perceval
Director: Alex van Warmerdam
Country: Netherlands
Genre: Thriller | Comedy
Official Trailer: Here

“And they descended upon earth to strengthen their ranks” appears onscreen at the start of Alex van Warnerdam’s Borgman, a Dutch dark comedy that undercuts its serious epigraph before circling back to high-minded allegory. When Borgman is funny, its jaw-droppingly, funny, a breath of fresh evil in an otherwise pretty heavy Competition. When it’s not funny, it unsettles you with small touches of surreal thrills.

When Borgman is funny, its jaw-droppingly, funny, a breath of fresh evil in an otherwise pretty heavy Competition. When it’s not funny, it unsettles you with small touches of surreal thrills.

Camiel Borgman (Jan Bijvoet) can be a lot of things, not least a manifestation of evil desires, or a resurrected pagan god coming for your Protestant work ethic, but most of all he’s a homeless man living under the forest floor. After narrowly escaping a shotgun wielding priest and his thugs, Borgman rings the doorbell of an immaculate suburban home. Borgman claims he knows Marina, housewife to her aggressive husband, who beats the bearded drifter up.

Marina nurses him back to health and hides him from her husband, for motivations that are prudently left to our imagination. Borgman begins to take over the gardening, and his deadpan henchmen (including a substantial supporting role from van Warmerdam) join him to take care of the grounds and the family’s neglected children, all the while clinically and creatively dispatching anyone who gets in Marina’s way. Still, he is master, not slave. More unsettling than horrifying, Borgman’s tricks include squatting naked over a sleeping Marina, using some kind of bad vibes osmosis to give her nightmares of her husband beating her to the living room floor.

As far as evil intruders go, Borgman is a principled demon: he repeatedly refuses Marina’s advances on account of his respect for matrimony. Bijvoet’s matter-of-fact performance, tinged with Christ-like self-righteousness, makes Borgman a fascinating foil for the first world pretensions and parental laziness of his hosts. His henchmen’s criminal ingenuity leads to the funniest popsicle stick gag of all-time. Granted that isn’t a loaded category, but if it was, this one would be tough to beat.

Bijvoet’s matter-of-fact performance, tinged with Christ-like self-righteousness, makes Borgman a fascinating foil for the first world pretensions and parental laziness of his hosts.

The perfect balancing act of Borgman against the selfish domestics unwinds as he sets his plans into motion, and it becomes clear that neither Marina nor her brood are all that captivating as characters. Like Sofia Coppola’s The Bling Ring, the filmmakers’ intent to expose shallowness only serves to undermine audience engagement. At least here, unlike The Bling Ring, there is something for your cerebral appetite.

Textually rich if ponderously slow in the last thirty minutes, Borgman entertains you to the fullest while giving you much to chew on. The first half approaches Lynchian zen, shaking you with absurdist laughter, but gets too academic for its own good; too concerned with the higher calling of didactic satire.

The following two tabs change content below.

• Bio
• Latest Posts

Alex Griffith

Alex is a recent University of Toronto graduate. He is studying Mandarin, going to film festivals, and prepping on his film lore like QT in the 80s. If you're in Beijing over the next few years and do film journalism, get in touch!

Latest posts by Alex Griffith (see all)

• Interview: Jia Zhangke on A Touch of Sin - October 17, 2013
• Interview: Tobias Lindholm on A Hijacking and the influence of Paul Greengrass on him as a filmmaker - August 12, 2013
• Interview: Inigo Westmeier on Dragon Girls - July 15, 2013