An excellent new 130-minute movie opens in New York and California this Friday. It’s an epic foreign film that takes us from London to New Zealand on a cinematic journey that’s emphatically about the journey, not the destination, which is tragic and terribly disappointing. The Dutch movie, presented by Music Box Films (run by an independent company which owns and operates Chicago’s Music Box Theatre) and neatly subtitled, is called Bride Flight, an unfortunate name that doesn’t do this enjoyable picture justice.
It concerns three women in the wake of World War 2 whose lives are irrevocably changed by their encounter with a magnetic and handsome young man during an historic early commercial aviation flight to an exotic, faraway land. Each woman has her reasons for wanting to leave the Netherlands, and so does he, involving painful pasts caused by the defeated Axis powers Germany and Japan, which plunged Holland into economic despair and soured the future for Dutch youths. These are the stories of voluptuous farm girl Ada (Karina Smulders), plucky Marjorie (Elise Schaap), and career girl Esther (Anna Drijver), who make their way toward Christchurch, New Zealand, which is not exactly the land of milk and honey in 1953. Along the way, they meet an irresistible young capitalist named Frank (Waldemar Torenstra, perfect in every scene) whose presence on the KLM Flying Dutchman affects everyone.
Religion and tradition figure prominently in the lives of the women, who must choose whether to settle for drudgery or seek something better in life. Two of the leads have an exacting chemistry that powers Bride Flight, taking charge from the beginning and leading us to temptation, erotica, and tragedy in a brilliantly tense, sexualized (not vulgar) drama. People take divergent paths, live in bunkers built to defend against invading Japanese, and bear the pain of convergent faith and force like Joan of Arc. Soft, elegant scenes with running water, sulfuric springs, and a primitive childbirth in the cold of winter amid trains across the landscape and a trio of women loaded with duty and guilt who long for liberation make Bride Flight, with noticeable gaps in exposition, one of the most interesting and inviting movies this year. “Make sure you’re happy,” Frank wisely instructs early in the film, written by Marieke van der Pol and directed by Ben Sombogaart, and despite ample evidence to the contrary, you root for them to do so. Also featuring Rutger Hauer (Ladyhawke, Blade Runner) in a few short scenes.