The white man is hell-bent on destroying and swallowing everything in his path. But it's so much more than that. This is towards the end of the white man's dominion in these parts. At least it feels like it, we know now, a century later that it didn't end there, and it probably never will.

A much tamer Triangle of Sadness. Especially the last part. There's some of that here, albeit a more quiet, subdued subversion of the "social order". Not complete, not even close.

It starts with the white being completely out of touch with the reality around them, but very much demanding complete docility. Agathe doesn't understand the telephone. But she is perhaps the least upsetting of the white characters somehow. She clings to the female attributes of the European upper class of the time, but is very much entrenched in this foreign culture. She accepts it and her place here in this social circle, bastard and all and is unwilling to leave it. So much so that she will do anything not to be taken away, not even from the factory where she claims she has no place as a woman. She is the most interesting character for me, together with Siti and maybe Karel.

The old man is done away with quickly. He is as loathsome as they can make a male colonizer and patriarch. Most tropes apply.

Siti sits between these two cultures and does a delicate balancing act between her abusive master, her stiff mistress who has mastered the art of sitting quietly in a room, doing nothing, her persistent suitor who rebels against the conquerors and dreams of a simple, but free life, her new masters who have their own ideas for the place and break down when confronted with reality, and her own son, Karel, for whose benefit she probably makes every decision, and who is also trapped on the border between the two warring cultures, never fully belonging to any of them. He is rejected, jeered at or kept at a distance by the locals and hated by his step-brother and his wife for who he is. I think Agathe is the only one who just accepts him for who he is and maybe lets him be. Karel himself has difficulty relating to the others, being encouraged by his father to act as a master with the locals. On the other hand he is despised by his white blood relatives.

There's a sizeable dose of dark humour and irony to the events, culminating in a monumental decision by Siti and a surreal, quite beautiful scene at the end.

Though I realize how low the bar is set, the prospect of seeing a Dutch film helmed by a promising director that plays outside the realm of atrocious romcoms made for 40+ year olds is an exciting but frustratingly rare one. Even rarer is when that film doesn't end up a derivative mess of obvious inspirations and even imitations, and that, I'm afraid, Sweet Dreams doesn't quite manage to dodge. What will be apparent from the word go is the 'artsy' compositions, that is, exact blocking in 4:3, mostly static frames where subjects are usually either linear or perpendicular to the camera - in short, pseudo-Wes Anderson. It's a sign of what I figured was going to happen sooner or later, upcoming directors who were clearly touched by modern arthouse productions kind of regurgitating the same visual ideas. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, the decisive factor is moreso if what these ideas are applied onto actually gel with them. Wes Anderson's idiosyncratic approach to his camerawork complements the overall theatrical nature of his films; here, this only serves to make the whole thing feel, as I said earlier, 'artsy' (a word that I've grown to severely dislike, but I struggle to find the right replacement), but in a way where it makes the whole thing feel slightly off, like in a dream - which you could point out conforms to the title, however, I don't think I buy into its intentionality, especially consider how the ending does delve into the abstract and symbolic, embracing its own peculiarity (though, sadly, it was too little too late for me). I do want to emphasize that the film does, in fact, look nice, arguably defeating the whole point of me rambling on about that particular aspect. Preferably though, I like to see a director not just stick to what has proven to work, but expand on their own visual 'library', if that makes sense.

In the narrative department, Sweet Dreams proves to be more intriguing. It explores one of the darkest pages in Dutch history: our colonization in Indonesia. It regularly pokes fun at the white oppressors, in this case the capitalists at the top of a sugar plantation who exploit the natives. One of the victims of this is concubine Siti, who is practically the main character of this tale. She occupies a similar position as Samuel L. Jackson in Django Unchained, trying to get some benefit out of her rulers. In doing this, though, it contributes to an already lacking sense of true oppression. Not asking for 12 Years A Slave here (which wouldn't work with the subdued nature of the presentation), but outside of a few scenes, this fails to truly interrogate the abuses.

-Spoilers below-

For instance, there is a near explicit mention of the White Man's Burden, yet no further development of it, even though the story lends itself perfectly to not only showing the absurdity, but the hypocrisy of that idea - 'saving' and 'educating' suppposedly savage natives by completely removing and ignoring any sense of their human rights. Cornelis nearly commits infanticide to be able to claim an inheritance, after which he retracts the plan, stating it's "not civilized". Even though his wife then disagrees with him, that angle is lost.

There are more such of examples of the story being ripe for such observations yet those fruits never being reaped, but what I'm more concerned with is how much Siti is underscored. As I said, she plays in a morally grey area, one which could provide interesting perspectives, but she is the only proper native character. Raza is another, but he is merely there to challenge Siti and thus hardly serves any function on his own. Ultimately, the Indonesians barely get a voice in this. It's all about the troubles of the white folks on top and a single concubine that managed to earn some relatively decent spot in the hierarchy. It is true that the Dutch had a type of feudal system in place, where some natives were appointed to rule, but that is not what is discussed here. In that regard, this is similar to Killers of the Flower Moon, where I also wished for more insight into the oppressed group, but luckily that was not as absent as it was here.

In any case, this stands head and shoulders above the gross of Dutch film productions, having an actual voice behind it and being one of the few to actually be succesful in its comedic efforts. However, like 2020's The Forgotten Battle I feel this wouldn't be praised as much as it is if it wasn't judged on that relative basis. Not that there aren't plenty of things like and/or appreciate, but I'm going to need a bit more convincing before I can consider this sorry industry to be on the path to salvation.

When the Dutch boss of an Indonesian sugar cane plantation suddenly dies 150 years ago, his progeny travel from Holland to take over the enterprise. Upon their arrival a secret is revealed that upends the lives of everyone who lives there. Normal rules don't apply anymore and the place descends into chaos.

Everyone has a screw loose In this darkly humorous genre twister. It is quirky, irreverent, erotic, playful, and absolutely puts no one on a pedestal. The film crew spent five months in Indonesia and recorded some amazing shots of green mountain wilderness and waterfalls. The film is witty, stylish, and imaginative. It takes advantage of the natural light and adds some intriguing artistic touches to how the film flows. I loved that the characters were complex, not black and white, and did unexpected things.

"I wanted to learn more about the dark side of Dutch colonial history," said director Ena Sendijarevic who was present at this North American premier screening at the Toronto International Film Festival. "We didn't learn this at home or in school." Sendijarevic was influenced to go to Indonesia by Henri Rousseau. "Even though he never went there m, he painted the jungle."

"You don't have to be somewhere to be from there."

In a similar manner Sweet Dreams took me into the Indonesian sugar cane fields and wilderness frontier from 150 years ago.