film festival

Movie review 

The movie’s name is instinct and it is a 2019 dutch drama film directed by Halina Reijn. The main actors are Carice Van Houten (Nicoline) and Marwan Kenzari (Idris). Halina Reijn is a Dutch actress and writer. She was professionally trained at the Maastricht Academy of Dramatic Arts. 

This movie talked about a prison therapist Nicoline falls in love with her charismatic patient Idris. But she is a very dedicated and professional woman, she thinks it is not good to have some relationship with the patient, besides, Idris is a violent serial rapist on the verge of being paroled. she is a little bit afraid of this, all her rational is reminding her not to get too close to Idris, she is struggling with her instinct. This movie showed the complexity of human being. 

This movie has many metaphors. Many shots didn’t show the facts directly and need the audiences to guess. For examples, her single mom’s actions to her shows that they have a complex relationship, not as simple as a mother-daughter relationship. And Nicoline’s awkward flirtation with a colleague from Belgium (Pieter Embrechts) offers a few more clues about what kind of woman she is and how she deals with men and sex. The director struggling to figure out how much of her protagonist’s behavior she wants or needs to explain and how much of it should be instinctual. And this uncertainty, which will likely bother at least a part of more mainstream audiences, does tie in with the central notion of there being little certainty about people’s true feelings or intentions, even — or perhaps especially — in the minds of the people concerned themselves. 

And the actors and actress’s acting skills are realistic and vivid. Every action of them can show strong desire, and her inner struggle is full of performance. These make the audiences present into the plot. 

In my opinions, this movie is not exactly a crowd-pleaser for the whole family, some movie plots make me feel sick. This is not a happy movie, it has a bad ending. I don’t recommend to children or people with poor psychological quality to watch this movie. But this movie has deeper meanings and it really makes us to think about human’s desire, instinct, and shame. Also I noticed that the whole cinema were almost old people. I think this movie not fit for a seven-year-old student to watch, so I am not very clear with the movie’s meaning. The review just my personal opinions.