Film Review: 'character' A Dutch Treat / Decleir Stands Out In Van Diem's 'character'

"Character," this year's Oscar winner for best foreign film, was originally reviewed Oct. 24 at the AFI Film Festival in Los Angeles. Sony Pictures Classics has the film in limited release.

A winner at the Golden Calf Awards, the Dutch equivalent of the Oscars, Mike van Diem's ambitious directorial debut is based on a celebrated novel by F. Bordewijk set in 1920s Holland. The performance by Belgian actor Jan Decleir as a monstrous civil servant and evil parent is a standout in the engrossing but downbeat tale of an illegitimate child's frustrating youth and young adulthood in the shadow of his powerful father.

Co-starring Fredja van Huer, Victor Low and Hans Kesting, van Diem's well-paced, richly mounted "Character" begins and ends with the circumstances surrounding the suspicious death of Decleir's chillingly remote and unforgiving character. He opposes his industrious bastard's business enterprises and otherwise appears to have an unapologetic mean streak, both toward his own flesh and blood and the poor people he evicts with such grim enjoyment.

One longs for his comeuppance, but the director does not deny him a shred of humanity while his beleaguered offspring is pushed to the breaking point and contemplates the ultimate revenge.