WITTE WIEVEN, directed by Didier Konings, brings my Fantastic Fest 2024 coverage to a belated end.
Frieda (Anneke Sluiters) is a pious woman struggling to conceive a child. In her medieval Dutch village, help only comes through God and the Church, via archaic fertility rituals.
One day, the local butcher Gelo (Leon van Wass) assaults Frieda, threatening to rape her in the forbidden woods just outside the village. Legend says no one leaves those woods alive, but this day, something stops Gelo and saves Frieda. She makes it out of the woods.
Once the villagers see this, the murmurs start. Frieda's cursed. She conspires with the Devil to conceive. She's a witch. Normally, these accusations wouldn't bear any weight, but given the voices and presences Frieda feels next to her in the coming days, including the feeling something beckons her to re-enter those mythical woods, she can't shake the feeling there's a grander design at work.
Konings' movie brings to mind the best Robert Eggers movies: THE NORTHMAN and THE WITCH. This is folk horror with roots firmly planted in an anti-patriarchal worldview, one decrying religious corruption - its unwillingness to prune the festering, fallacious branches of humans committing abuses in the name of otherwise nurturing principles. In this film, as evidenced through grand wide shots firmly establishing this world's perspective: nature is king. Humans pale against the might of a forest hundreds of years old.
Sluiters plays a woman whose stillness is a survival tactic. She keeps her mouth shut against her husband's cowardice, the town's baseless accusations. The performance is not one of a meek woman discovering her anger, but rather an angry woman finally failing to hold back righteous fury. Sluiters' screams make for some of the movie's most rewarding and intense scenes.
And all of this comes in at just 60 minutes? What a bargain! How can you pass this up?
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