Borgman

Description

Camiel Borgman just wants to “play.” Unfortunately for well-heeled couple Marina and Richard, his funny games involve complex psychological warfare and tend to accumulate an alarmingly large number of corpses. After being flushed out of his subterranean forest hovel by a hatchet-wielding priest, Camiel trolls a nearby bourgeois enclave in search of a hot bath and a friendly face, but is instead treated to a brutal beating by the unsympathetic Richard. Marina, however, takes pity on the sad sack, and he quickly makes himself at home—unbeknownst to Marina’s husband and to the confused fascination of their kids, whom he delights with surreptitious bedtime stories. But soon Camiel gets bored, and, along with a seemingly inexhaustible network of psychopathic scam artists prone to casual violence, hatches a bizarre plot to upend the family’s life in ways unlike anything found in a children’s fairy tale. Peppering the film with darkly comic, surrealist interludes, director Alex van Warmerdam deftly interlaces the absurdism and stark violence of this pitch-black social satire/thriller so seamlessly that its truly disturbing nature comes at a slow burn, and to devastating effect—it’s as if Boudu were saved from drowning on the set of Blue Velvet. –Michelle Devereaux

Film Details