Hatred rules father-son relationship in `Character'

CHARACTER (STAR) (STAR) (STAR) 1/2Katadreuffe Fedja van HuetDreverhaven Jan DecleirJoba (mother) Betty ShuurmanDe Gankelaar Victor LowLorna Te George Tamar van den DopJan Maan Hans KestingWritten and directed by Mike van Diem. In Dutch with Englishsubtitles. Running time: 114 minutes. No MPAA rating (sexuality andseaminess; intended for adults). Opening today at the Music Box.`Character" oozes with feelings of spite and revenge that grow upbetween a father and the son he had out of wedlock. It is dark,bitter and fascinating, as all family feuds are - about hatred sodeep that it can only be ended with a knife.

The Dutch winner of this year's Academy Award as best foreignfilm, it involves the character of Dreverhaven (Jan Decleir), a loneand stony bailiff who exacts stern measures on the poor. One day,and one day only, he enters the room of his housekeeper, Joba (BettyShuurman). That visit leads to a pregnancy. The man doesn't sendhis housekeeper into disgrace and abandonment, as we might expect;she freely chooses such a state, preferring it to the prospect ofbecoming Dreverhaven's wife. "When is our wedding?" the stern mandemands of her, from time to time, but she does not answer.The boy is named Katadreuffe (Fedja van Huet). In school he istaunted as a bastard, and his mother is shouted at in the streets.He grows up with a deep hatred for his father. We learn all of thisin flashbacks; the film opens with a confrontation between father andson, and with reasons to suspect that the boy is guilty of hisfather's murder.The film is based on a 1938 novel by Ferdinand Bordewijk. Itevokes some of the darker episodes of Dickens and also, in its focuson the grind of poverty and illegitimacy, reflects the twistedstories of family secrets by that grim Victorian, George Gissing. Itis essentially the story of a young man growing up and making good,by pluck and intelligence, but all of his success comes out of thedesire to spite his father."Today I have been made a lawyer. You no longer exist for me!You have worked against me all my life," he tells his father in theopening scene. "Or for you," the father replies. For reasonsconcealed in his own past, he believes that to spare the rod is tospoil the child, and indeed calls in a loan just three days beforethe son's final examinations, apparently hoping to cause him to fail."Why don't you leave our boy in peace?" Joba asks Dreverhaven in oneof their rare meetings. "I'll strangle him for nine-tenths, and thelast tenth will make him strong," the old man replies.The film is set in Rotterdam, in sets and streets suggesting itsgloomy turn-of-the-century shadows; I was reminded of "M" and otherGerman Expressionist films in which the architecture sneers at thecharacters. The boy finds work in a law firm, rises to the post ofoffice manager and even falls in love, with Lorna Te George (Tamarvan den Dop). She perhaps likes him, too, but he is so mired inself-abasement that he cannot declare his love, and he bitterly lookson as she keeps company with another man from the office. When heencounters her in a park some years later, he tells her, "I shallnever marry anyone else. I have never forgotten you." For a manlike him, masochistic denial is preferable to happiness.The film is filled with sharply seen characters, includingKatadreuffe's friend, an odd-looking man with an overshot lower jaw,who tries to feed him common sense. There are scenes of trulyDickensian detail, as when the father evicts a family from quarterswhere the rent has not been paid - going so far as to carry theirdying mother into the streets himself. (He says she's faking it; hehas a good eye.)The opening scenes, which seem to show a murder, provide theframe, as the young man is cross-examined by the police. The closingscenes provide all the answers, in a way, although there is a lotmore about old Dreverhaven we would like to know, including how anyshreds of goodness and decency can survive in the harsh ground of hissoul.