It’s taken almost three years for the Dutch treat, “Bride Flight,” to finally land on our shores, but it proves well worth the wait, as it whisks you back in time via narrative and design.
Like the romantic weepies of old, Ben Sombogaart’s epic 2008 tale about three young women emigrating from Holland in 1953 to unite with their prospective husbands in New Zealand is sudsy soap opera at its best, with coincidence and irony oozing from every pore. It’s preposterous as all get out, but it’s also absorbing, a real page-turner that thrives on love, lust and betrayal.
It runs the gamut, too, with everything from an out-of-wedlock baby to a torrid affair complete with naked, heaving bosoms to a pinch of the Holocaust, a splash of wine and a dash of high fashion. It’s almost too much for one movie to contain. Yet, somehow, Sombogaart manages to effectively squeeze it all in to the span of 130 enthralling minutes. Read more…
