|
For a Lost Soldier | 
| Director: Roeland Kerbosch
Actors: Maarten Smit, Jeroen Krabbe, Andrew Kelley, Freark Smink, Elsje De Wijn
Studio: Fox Lorber
List Price: $19.98
Buy Used: $4.95
You Save: $15.03 (75%)
New (8) Used (21) Collectible (2) from $4.95
Rating:  64 reviews
Sales Rank: 22211
Format: Color, Ntsc
Languages: Dutch (Original Language), English (Original Language)
Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Media: VHS Tape
Number Of Items: 1
Running Time: 92 Minutes
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.4
Dimensions (in): 7.3 x 4.2 x 1.1
ISBN: 6303238734
UPC: 720917011486
EAN: 9786303238739
ASIN: 6303238734
Theatrical Release Date: May 7, 1993
Release Date: November 11, 1997
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Shipping: Expedited shipping available
Shipping: International shipping available
Condition: VHS. Ex-Video Rental with Original Artwork/Coverbox. Some coverboxes may be cut and inserted in a clear plastic case. Guaranteed to play.
| |
| Similar Items:
|
| Customer Reviews: Read 59 more reviews...
 Requires an open mind, but surprisingly a fine movie December 6, 2001
askthedust73@yahoo.com (United States)
155 out of 158 found this review helpful
Because of its extremely risky subject: A friendship that develops into a romance between a 20-30-something Canadian soldier and a 12 year old Dutch boy, “For A Lost Soldier” is no doubt destined to remain in the very obscure, little-seen foreign film file, which is unfortunate. The first half of this film is reminiscent of other great coming-of-age war films like John Boorman’s “Hope and Glory”, but takes a very offbeat twist when the boy, Jeroen, meets Walt, the somewhat melancholy but friendly soldier. While some may be unsettled with the idea of a boy and a man having a romantic relationship, the story really focuses more on the friendship and the rites of passage of a boy growing up. World War II must have been a terrifying experience for many of the children of Europe, especially when you are sent far away from your family and surrounded by people and places you don’t know. Never being graphic, this sometimes haunting film delicately deals with themes of love, loneliness, friendship and abandonment. An enjoyable mix of light-hearted moments and touching, poignant moments as well. Directed with grace and class, there’s a lyrical beauty and lush tone to this film which is subtle and under-stated. The audience is invited into the sleepy Dutch countryside and the simple lives of a peaceful, tolerant people. This movie is much more than an offbeat, foreign “gay love story”. “For a Lost Soldier” is a charming and captivating film that will stick with you long after you’ve seen it. It deserves to be seen.
Reviews illustrate the hypocrisy toward gay coming of age films February 20, 2006
Cecil B. DeMille (San Francisco, CA, USA)
70 out of 77 found this review helpful
Take a look at some of the reviews for this film, and then compare them with the reviews for "American Beauty." What's amazing is that in the later film, the Kevin Spacey character spends the entire movie having the hots for a high school cheerleader his daughter's age. In fact he actually gets her stripped down bare-breasted as he readies to play hide the sausage with her on the livingroom couch.
So, why is it that "American Beauty" is spared all the Puritanical outrage, when it portrays a forty-something middle age man stripping down a girl minor, but this film gets trashed for having a twenty-something soldier do the same thing to male minor. I'm not saying either is right, but I am correct in pointing out the blatant double standard.
It's the same hypocrisy exhibited by neanderthals such as The Today Show's Gene Shalit, who praised American Beauty, yet referred to Brokeback Mountain as being a "sexual predator" film.
 Well made film about a powder keg sexual issue June 1, 2005
Get What We Give (Georgia)
61 out of 65 found this review helpful
For a Lost Soldier is a quiet little film about subject matter that no American filmmaker would touch with a ten foot pole. It is a touchy matter even by international standards. However, somehow the Dutch are able to address the issue of love between a man and a boy without making it purile and scandalous. Dutch filmmakers seem to be the only ones able to touch such "iffy" subject matter and make it far less "oogy" than it could be.
First of all, this really isn't a movie about sex or sexuality so much as it is a film about love and loss. That is why it works.
The time is the early 1940's. The place is Amsterdam and rural areas outside of Amsterdam. The situation is that Amsterdam is suffering from the Nazi occupation and the lack of supplies this has brought about. Residents of Amsterdam are shipping their children off to the country to live and work on farms so that they will have food to eat and a warm bed in which to sleep.
This is very frightening stuff if you allow yourself to be transported as one of the children. They've been uprooted and shipped away from home to live with strangers, who may or may not be kind to them. They have fear as a constant companion as they worry about their parents and about the sounds of war in the distance.
Our protagonist, Jeroen, is a fresh faced boy of 12 and he has been placed with a family who actually wanted a girl not a boy. While the family is basically kind to him, Jeroen doesn't understand farm life and is slow to adjust. His "best" friend is another boy, by a year or two, who has been uprooted and sent to the country as well. The older boy is obviously in the throes of puberty, whereas Jeroen really hasn't hit that point in his physical development. Still prepubescent by a few months or so, Jeroen doesn't understand the lust for the girls and would rather be companions with other boys. He hasn't yet developed that male female connection that the older boys have. He and his friend wander the countryside and discover a plane that has crashed in the water (killing its occupants). This is the first time that Jeroen sees the naked body of a boy/man. This is also a turning point for him. He is made to realize that being naked with another boy is not something normal - "Don't tell them you saw me naked" his friend tells him.
Later, Canadians arrive on the scene and liberate the residents of the countryside town. They are all ecstatic and grateful for the newfound freedom. The young women and the expatriated Amsterdam girls quickly flirt with the young soldiers. This provides them with chocolates and coca colas as well as sexual perks for the soldiers.
This also brings about the films' greatest flaw. As viewers, we can comprehend where the filmmakers are going with the subject matter. However, on screen the transition from acquantaince to lover between Jeroen and one of the soldiers isn't as straightforward as one would expect. Undoubtedly, even the Dutch will allow only so much to be revealed of such touchy subject matter.
Jeroen and one of the soldiers, Walt, strike up a hesitant friendship. It is quite plain that Walt is flirting with the boy, but what is also quite plain is that not only is Jeroen flirting, knowingly right back, but that he seems to be taking the lead in relationship developing beyond just simple platonic relations.
Walt is identified as gay by a couple of statements he makes. "I thought right from the start that you were my kind of boy, Jeroen." That is actually rather creepy, since it means that Walt is truly a pedophile. However, Jeroen knows what Walt means. He's come to realize (and so have we) that Jeroen is gay as well. He may not have ever been with another boy before, but he knows who and what he is.
When the sexual aspect of the relationship is actually consummated, it is handled so subtly that you might miss it. What is somewhat mystifying however, is that the soldiers under Walt seem to know what is transpiring between he and the boy and they pass no judgment nor do they do anything to prevent or stop it.
Anyway, when the soldiers pull out of Holland it is quick and Walt isn't man enough to face up to the fact that he will leave behind him a boy who is desperately in love with him. He sneaks off during the night. Jeroen is destroyed. It is only his mother's reappearance that helps him make it through the situation. However, it is also her reappearance that causes him to state that he is moving to Canada. We know he wants to find Walt.
Most telling of all is that the film is actually a flashback - a rememberance - by Jereon as an adult, a (supposedly) gifted coreographer, who is creating a dance for the fortieth anniversary of Holland's liberation from the Nazis. He can't get the dance steps right and it is only through his memory of his time with Walt that he can bring the beautiful dance to life.
There are a couple more, quite poignant moments that occur that I will not tell you about, because they should bring a few tears to your eyes, from joy and sadness.
If you can get past the subject matter as we view it today, and focus on the fact that this is still a love story - one of unrequited, or rather unfulfilled, love, you will find yourself enjoying it quite a bit.
The language is primarily Dutch, with a few lines of English here and there.
 I'm Conflicted November 17, 2003
H. M Pyles (Chicago, IL United States)
43 out of 69 found this review helpful
Oh, my. What to say about this movie? It is, after all, about a young man having sex with a 12-year-old boy.First, the easy part . . . . The movie is well-crafted, structured around flashback, a deft mix of subtitled Dutch and English in reflection of the idiosyncratic communication that evolves between the main characters, and beautifully filmed in the soft light of northern Europe. As a piece of cinematic craftmanship, I'd give it 4 stars. But then there's the story itself. Can sexual relations between an adult and a child ever be excused by love or circumstances? Before this movie, the answer for me was a resounding no. After this movie, I simply don't know. The man here is not a sexual predator in that he is not attracted to the boy by virtue of his youth. Instead, he is a gay man doubly isolated by his sexual orientation and by being on foreign ground at the end of a world-shattering war. And, coming across a gay boy likewise isolated from his home at the end of the same war, a bond is forged that did not have sex as its initial aim and came to include sex only after love was so deeply established as to have rendered age irrelevant. Or did it? After all, the soldier is first attracted to the boy by his looks, not by anything he knew about the boy or his circumstances. And can age ever be irrelevant to sex involving minors? Do 12-year-olds ever know enough of themselves, their world, and its risks to be informed participants? If nothing else, this movie accomplishes something by making the question tenable. But does it, in the end, make this love affair all right? I simply don't know. This movie stands up as a thought-provoking film. It should not, however, be read as an unambiguous justification for adult/child sex. Since it, however, implies more than presents the ambiguities and could leave some thinking they've just watched an argument that child sex taboos are nothing more than unwarranted modern western uptightness, I discount it to 3 stars.
Hauntingly beautiful March 25, 1999
42 out of 45 found this review helpful
The plot in this movie is very simple: a man revisits his childhood home only to relive the memory of his first love. The twist in this is that the first love we are talking about is a Canadian soldier in the aftermath of WWII when the narrator was just a teenage boy in rural Holland. ~[Gulp]~ Extremely well written and acted. The tender relationship between the protagonists is dealt with in a very mature and serene fashion, devoid of our American Puritanism. Jeroen and Walt obviously need each other at a time when the world is falling apart and they develop a comradeship that turns into a love which is never made to seem dirty, perverted or wrong. A pioneering effort. Leave it to the Dutch to be so civilized.
|
|
|
We'll be adding even more exciting features to assist you in the coming year.
Thank you for shopping at the Depot.com online shopping depot.
©2008 Depot.com | |
