Hemel

An outstanding debut from 30-year-old Sacha Polak, Hemel is a drama both visually ravishing and psychologically complex. The luminous Hannah Hoekstra plays the title character ("Hemel" means "Heaven" in Dutch), a beautiful twenty-something who, on the surface of things, appears the embodiment of a modern, self-empowered young woman. She is sexually adventurous and seemingly in control, but her penchant for constant one-night stands hints at some underlying emotional issues. When her successful roué of a father—an obvious model for Hemel’s behaviour—announces he is moving in with his new girlfriend, Hemel’s worldview is knocked askew…

Polak’s dazzling control of her material belies the fact that this is her first feature film as a director. Her melding of Daniël Bouquet’s exquisite images with Rutger Reinders mesmerizing electronica-based score gives Hemel a very modern feel, even if some of the issues being dealt with wouldn’t be out of place in classical drama.

"Lust, love, and need prove a tangled knot inside the heart of one young woman in Hemel, Sacha Polak’s alluring character study… Polak’s episodic tale has a dreaminess marked by shots that drift in and out of focus to convey Hemel’s retreat from real feeling… or tilt from right to left on a fixed axis to suggest that she’s careening out of control. Like Shame, Hemel presents sex as a means of avoiding true emotion, but unlike Steve McQueen’s film, it stops short of depicting it as outright unpleasant…"—Nick Schager, Slant