Director: Luuk Audenaerde
Writer: Luuk Audenaerde
Cast: Cheyenne Löhnen, Robbert Blei & Isis Caljé
Running time: 12mins
In the six years since I launched Indy Film Library in Amsterdam, it has been my pleasure to become acquainted with an exciting generation of independent filmmakers, breaking through in the Netherlands and further afield.
Victoria Warmerdam is making waves internationally now, but back in the lowlands, innovative and impactful artists like Mira Alkadri, Harvey Kadijk and Naomi Pacifique are showing the often-overlooked Dutch indy scene has become a force to be reckoned with. With Luuk Audenaerde’s latest entry into the Indy Film Library, I am now certain his name deserves to be part of that same conversation.
Audenaerde first graced our platform with a body-horror in the lockdown months of 2020. While I found Out of My Skin to be lacking a little invention, the film’s gory practical effects and attention to detail spoke of a director and team that had great potential. And Audenaerde’s follow-up, Manic Lover, delivered on both fronts – carrying over that characteristic excellence when it came to managing details, but adding “imaginative and ominous set-dressing” and “a magnetic central figure” to procedings, whose “inner paradoxes seep into every corner of the story, providing us a well-rounded and relatable character to latch onto.”
With Nevenschade (which has been given the English title Moral Hazard, but translates as Collateral Damage – a name that might actually be a better thematic fit), we see Audenaerde’s upward-trajectory take another mighty leap forward. In a limited run-time, the film manages to delve deep into some thoroughly unsavory characters, drawing out human elements which not only make them well-rounded characters, but serve to make their actions that bit more horrific – probing one of the most uncomfortable of truths we have to face in our present age of horrors. As much as we would like to characterise the people who commit acts of supreme exploitation and violence as ‘monsters’, they are people – just like the rest of us.
Digging into the systemic kinks which encourage and enable human beings to behave inhumanely, we follow Annia (Cheyenne Löhnen), moments after an S&M stunt gone horribly wrong. Annia is breathless and baulking at what she has just done: a hunting knife she was holding now buried in a sex worker, who her wealthy husband Jacob had procured for a night of revelry.
Löhnen also starred in 2022’s Manic Lover, and once again she is unquestionably the standout performer, with another character struggling to reconcile her fantasy scenario with a grim reality – albeit in a very different context. In the years between the films, she has become a fixture in Goede tijden, slechte tijden (a Dutch soap opera) – but has linked up with Audenaerde again to great effect, also serving as an executive producer here. Executive producers often contribute to the budget of a shoot, and while I don’t know if that was the case here, every penny was worth it. Both in terms of supporting a remarkable writer-director Löhnen has worked with, but also in terms of the space this gives her to convey her range as an actor.
As Annia assures Jelena (Isis Caljé) – choking on blood in the back seat of her car while they drive to a ‘hospital’ – that everything will be just fine, we see a fracturing psyche really bargaining with themselves. The human side of Annia is going to pieces at what she has done: she has killed another person, and whether or not it was an accident, that is the normal reaction to have. But another side of Annia is increasingly under the control of Jacob (Robbert Blei), who is her gateway to the finer things in life.
As Annia’s ‘assurances’ bleed into panicked, heaving sobs, the conflict between the two versions of herself are writ large. At the intersection of class and gender, she sees that this woman could have been her, and in the eyes of men around her, she might well be ideologically interchangeable with Jelena. But barking everything will be OK at Jelena – and herself – is a reflxive method of drowning these thoughts out, in favour of a blind belief that her hedonistic lifestyle can go on regardless; and she will commit to any number of mental gymnastics in order to ensure that she goes on believing it.
Jacob chillingly reasons with Annia not to see Jelena as human, but rather as a commodity, “a whore” with a “drug problem”, the kind of ideologically assigned non-person who just “goes missing” all the time. And as angrily as she reacts to this initially, the resistance to the position ebbs away as she allows herself to draw invisible lines between her own position, and that of the other woman.
A dark audio easter-egg in the final credits, skilfully deployed by sound designer Fabian van Dongen, suggests that these lines might not stand up to much scrutiny in the grand scheme. But I will leave it to audiences to draw their own conclusions on that front.
As Jacob, Blei also conveys hidden depths in his own character. A man who is struggling to take his own place in the grand patriarchal order, in a heartbeat he transforms from a domineering, vampiric presence – looming over his wife like a bondage-clad Klaus Kinski – to a simpering, sneering Igor, pleading with ‘Daddy’ (the faceless, voiceless pimp) that their relationship will not be damaged by the destruction of his ‘property’. While he might come across as a more grotesque caricature than Annia, he is also a human caught at a disturbing ideological crossroads, where he finds the atomised and exploitative values he espouses are still not easy to smuggle past his last shreds of decency. But as the system and situation he finds himself in will dictate, he will likely find a way.
Other star turns in the production which should be singled out include Nino Stafleu, the director of photography who also shone in Manic Lover. Stafleu’s imagery makes the most of every nook and cranny, every opportunity to contrast murky shadow and glaring, unfiltered light, to convey stunning visual depth, but also to underline the turmoil in the characters – cowering from the cold, hard truth that threatens their comfortable class status, and seeking refuge in a dark and desperate worldview instead.
Editor Stan van Lingen imbues the final montage with a kinetic energy reminiscent of Edgar Wright – making the most of the S&M context to use slaps and roaring engines to cut between scenes. And as you might expect from the earlier Out of My Skin, the make-up and gore featured here are also nightmarishly impactful. Loes de Jong in this case delivers a set of ghoulish set-piece effects – most notably, a gushing knife-wound in Calje’s screaming Jelena.
Calje also should take great pride in her performance here. Giving something of Tim Roth in Reservoir Dogs, her delivery of Audenaerde’s script is spot-on; with her cries ranging from a desperate sadness to verging on sardonic vengeance – as she chokes back blood to both rubbish Annia’s claims everything will be fine, and bid her to look at what you have done. There seems to be an ironic acceptance to the statement in this form, a kind of solace received from the idea that “I might be doomed, but I am going to make damned sure you won’t be fine either.”
The one thing I would note is that I wish there were more of Nevenschade. That is not a fault with the film itself, but Audenaerde’s ambitions will begin to rub up against the limitations of short-form filmmaking soon. This movie is already bursting with ideas – and to allow for further elaboration on them will require a longer run-time for future projects.
This is the most accomplished effort of Luuk Audenaerde and his team yet. Nevenschade is a huge success on all technical fronts, but it also finds a way to deploy those means to the end of innovative and socially critical storytelling. It speaks of a filmmaker who is no longer just filled with promise, but one ready to realise that on the biggest of stages. Somebody give this guy a feature!