For a Lost Soldier (Dutch: Voor een Verloren Soldaat) is a 1992 Dutch coming-of-ageromantic drama film directed by Roeland Kerbosch, based on the autobiographical novel of the same title by ballet dancer and choreographer Rudi van Dantzig. It is centered around an adult[1][2] Canadian soldier (Andrew Kelley) who meets a young Dutch boy (Maarten Smit) in rural 1945 Holland. They experience a romantic and sexual relationship during the liberation of the Netherlands from Nazi occupation.
Plot
In the 1980s, middle-aged ballet dancer/choreographer Jeroen is rehearsing a ballet about his memories of Canada's liberation of the Netherlands from Nazi occupation. In his office, Jeoren has a photo of himself as a child with the foster family with which he spent the last year of World War II and met a soldier called Walt. He decides to visit the village in which he lived then. He takes with him a pair of vintage sunglasses.
In 1944, Jeroen is sent by his mother to live with a foster family in the countryside to get enough to eat. During the first night, he has a bed-wetting accident while sharing a bed with his foster parents' son, who is slightly older than him. Towards the end of the war, a Canadian warplane crashes into the sea at the nearby beach and starts fascinating Jeroen. Then, he and his bisexual friend Jan unsuccessfully try to explore the sunken plane against the family's permission.
When an army of Canadian liberators enters the village, Jeroen and Walt, an adult Canadian soldier,[3] start flirting with each other. At a party the soldiers host, the two secretly dance with each other. After coincidentally meeting again, Jeroen accompanies Walt to the hotel where the soldiers stay. Jeroen, Walt, some other soldiers and their female flirts later meet up at the beach. The rest eventually leaves. Despite not understanding each other's language, the pair walks and talks. Jeroen shows Walt the crashed plane. Intending to get the jeep the soldiers are forced to share to explore the plane, the two return to the hotel. Since Walt's comrades have removed the jeep's distributor head to prevent him from taking it so that they can go out themselves, he goes inside to steal it back. After finding it, he decides to take a shower while Jeroen waits outside. Jeroen eventually sneaks into his room, and the two have sex.
When approached by Jan the following Sunday, Jeroen shows more self-confidence than before and defends himself against an attempt at sexual assault. He and Walt meet again at the Sunday service. After mass, they explore the wreck, and Walt gives Jeroen a driving lesson. While Walt is asleep after the two have had sex again, Jeroen grabs his photos and secretly puts one showing him alone in his uniform in his own shirt's pocket. When Jeroen gets home late from school, Walt is waiting for him in the family's garden to take a photo of them. Jeroen is disappointed that Walt cannot be in the photo due to taking it, so he tells Jeroen to put his identification tag around the neck of a scarecrow and make it pose as his "double". However, Walt's comrades arrive with their girlfriends and suggest to take a photo of him and his boyfriend near the family. While trying to develop the photos, Jeroen accidentally destroys the negative. He comforts Walt, who is upset about the loss of the photo, by saying that they will always remain together. Walt, meanwhile, does not have the heart to reveal that he and his comrades are leaving tomorrow. Walt later tries to ask Jeroen's foster father Hait to tell Jeroen the actual truth. However, Hait does not understand him.
While overhearing the elder of his foster sisters and a friend, Jeroen finds out that the army has left. Devastated, he pushes his younger foster sister off her bike and uses it to search for Walt. Returning home at night, a defeated Jeroen realizes that the laundry his elder foster sister is hanging up contains the shirt in which he hid Walt's photo, which is now ruined. Heartbroken, Jeroen is woken up by a storm that night and sees part of the scarecrow shining through the window, causing him to believe that it is still wearing Walt's tag; running outside and grabbing for it, he impales his hand on the barb wire around the scarecrow and is found by Hait. When Hait burns the scarecrow the following morning, he finds Walt's sunglasses, which he forgot in their garden after taking their photos. Jeroen eventually sits down by the sea crying and is joined by Hait, to whom he reveals what is going on. When Jeroen's mother comes to take him back home, Hait secretly puts the films from Walt's camera in Jeroen's suitcase and gives the sunglasses to Jeroen's mom to "give them to him at a later time". As they leave, the plane is revealed to have been hung up to dry, and Hait asks Jeroen to send him a photo of them together.
In the present, Laura, a co-worker of Jeroen, hands him an envelope. It contains an enlarged version of the photo in Jeroen's office. Underneath it is a zoom of Walt's identification tag, revealing his contact information.
Despite its controversial themes, Kerbosch said that the film was broadly accepted. "In Holland, audiences just took it as a love story," he said. "And that's also what happened in New York, because it's a love story, a beautiful and romantic one at that."[4]
Stephen Holden of The New York Times praised the film's "refusal to load the story with contemporary psychological and social baggage" but wrote that the film was unable to achieve a "coherent dramatic frame". He added that the film does not insinuate Walt was responsible for harming Jeroen or had abused Jeroen, and also that within the work "is no mention of homosexuality."[2]
Kevin Thomas of the Los Angeles Times wrote that due to a lack of clarity over the homosexual themes, it "delves into issues far too serious and controversial for such questions to go unanswered." He also stated that the confusion over language, as the film is partially in English and partially in Dutch, may have caused "lacks crucial clarity", despite good acting.[5]
While Desmond Ryan of The Philadelphia Inquirer called the film "an acutely observed portrait of adolescent yearning", he criticized the film's opaque ending, saying, "What was evenhanded becomes simply open-ended."[6]
The North American Man/Boy Love Association (NAMBLA), a pedophilia advocacy organization, praised the film, focusing on the relationship between the adult and child. "We see man and boy kissing, stripping naked, showering, climbing under the covers. There is one long, lovingly photographed close-up of the boy's face as the soldier, lying upon him, penetrates him anally. All of this is handled in perfect taste, of necessity with a minimum of words, since the boy speaks little English and the soldier no Dutch." NAMBLA used the film to justify pedophilic relationships, comparing the fight against child abuse and pedophilia to the persecution of "Jew[s], Gypsy[s], and homosexual[s]."[7]
References
^Kerbosch, Roeland (7 May 1993), Voor een verloren soldaat (Drama, Romance, War), Maarten Smit, Andrew Kelley, Jeroen Krabbé, Sigma Film Productions, Algemene Vereniging Radio Omroep (AVRO), retrieved 23 March 2024
