European Films

A gullible and cantankerous taxi driver gets caught up in the early 2000s Amsterdam taxi war in Dana Nechushtan’s feature debut Nachtrit (Night Run). Not exactly a tourism advert for the Dutch capital, the film unflinchingly focuses on the city’s working and immigrant classes in all of their exploited splendour. Essentially a character-study, Nachtrit benefits greatly from two phenomenal performances by Frank Lammers and Fedja van Huêt as, respectively, the taxi driver and his more intelligent yet two-timed younger brother. Lammers and van Huêt really sell both the fraternal camaraderie and anger, elevating a somewhat unfocused script to a decent mix of cautionary tale and kitchen sink drama. The film did modest business in Dutch theatres and is currently out on DVD, where it should find a bigger audience.

 

The basic intrigue seems directly taken from life: Dennis (Lammers) is a thirty-something taxi-driving employee who dreams of buying his own taxi permit and start a limousine service with his brother Marco (Van Huêt), a car mechanic. Marco’s wife Elize (Peggy Jane de Schepper, adequate) is an old squeeze of Dennis and Dennis frequently visits his brother’s household that also includes his beloved little niece. When a possibility comes up to buy a permit (there are only a limited number available) Dennis borrows money from the wrong people and, it turns out later, for no good reason. Before he has paid the first instalment on his cutthroat interest, a change in regulations opens up what had up till that point been a closed market in which a certain hierarchy had been firmly established. Permits are as good as useless and chaos and violence ensues, as it did in real life when this happened in the Dutch capital in the early 2000s. 

 

Actor-turned-screenwriter Franky Ribbens uses the background of what came to be called the Amsterdam taxi war for a portrait of Dennis and the working class of which is he part, which also includes many mainly Moroccan immigrants including the ambitious and cocky Mahmoud (played by Mohammed Chaara from Het schnitzelparadijs, in which Lammers also starred). Ribbens gets the atmosphere right and litters the dialogues with expletives -- many of them racist -- as if they were articles or verbs. Offensive though they may be, they certainly sound authentic. 

 

Character development, however, is singularly focussed on Dennis, comes relatively late and is small and almost symbolic (something that also plagued the recent Winterreise / Winter Journey), so the early sections tend to drag as a result. They would be unbearable if it were not for Lammers’ affable demeanour that transforms the loser protagonist specialised in making bad decisions at least into a big-hearted, gullible loser. Two late scenes involving cheap coffee are positively Hitchcockian in the tension they generate seemingly out of nowhere. This is exactly the type of precision and focus that the earlier scenes lack.

 

Though mediocre performances could never do justice to a great script, great performances can and do elevate mediocre screenplays to new heights. Stephen Frears’ recent The Queen, about Queen Elizabeth II’s reaction to the death of Lady Diana, is such an example, and Nachtrit is another. In both films the main character (played by Helen Mirren in The Queen and Lammers here) discovers that what they held for granted and what indeed structured their world was a lot less unsinkable than it had always seemed. Both are reluctant to admit this realisation and when it finally comes it will radically change both their personal and professional lives.

 

The two main performances are also greatly aided by a supporting performance that is almost invisible but nevertheless crucial in setting the stage for the main character: Michael Sheen’s Tony Blair in The Queen and Fedja van Huêt’s Marco in Nachtrit. Both are beloved antagonists (though in The Queen’s case professional affection may be a more appropriate term) who are more perceptive than the protagonists but who are unable to save them from themselves.

 

Nachtrit’s Amsterdam is a blur of neons, dirty bars and hideous interiors, expertly captured by cinematographer Bert Pot (Van God los/Godforsaken). The city has never quite looked like this on screen and this feeling is amplified by Ribbens'  many colourful colloquialisms. The street battles are impressively staged and the use of actual taxi war "veterans" as extras in these scenes allows for an almost documentary-like veracity and anger. Since this is Nechushtan’s first feature, it is hard to judge how much credit she deserves for the two phenomenal performances at the film’s heart, but the fact that there are two seems to speak in her favour.

 

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