Character

Winner of the 1998 Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, and with good reason: This superbly crafted Dutch film set in 1920s Rotterdam is a taut and altogether gripping portrait of a man haunted by the figure of the father he doesn't even know. Young lawyer Katadreuffe (Fedja van Huet) is arrested for the murder of a heartless bailiff named Dreverhaven (Jan Decleir), whose sole pleasure in life came from evicting impoverished tenants and bankrupting anyone foolish enough to borrow money from his credit company. But that's only half the story. In flashback, we learn that Dreverhaven enjoyed a one-night stand years earlier with his brusque housekeeper (Betty ...