Antonia's Line

The writing on the wall reads “Welcome to our liberators” as Antonia and her teenage daughter Danielle light from the bus that delivers them to the World-War II-ravaged, Dutch countryside town of Antonia's birth as the movie begins. It's our first hint of the impact that Antonia and her matrilineal clan will have on their ancestral home. They have come to bury Antonia's mother but remain to foster two more generations. Antonia's Line is a family saga, and though it bears many of the familiar hallmarks of the form -- the village full of colorful characters, the waxing and the waning of the seasons, and the inevitable conflicts between the needs of the individual and the community -- the movie is thoroughly original in its feminist simplicity. Antonia and her “line” of descendants generate a matrilineal heritage and an independence of thought, whose effects extend beyond their immediate blood relations and trickle throughout the community. Beginning with Antonia's mother, who dies spewing invective at her long-gone philanderer of a husband, these self-defined women have little need for husbands. This is not the same as saying they have no need for sex -- be it for pleasure, for procreation, or for love. Antonia makes a friend and ally of the kind widower with five sons who wants her hand before she agrees years later to sleep with him, though not wed him. Danielle goes to the city to find herself a stud when her urge for maternity strikes. Her daughter Therese, a music and mathematics genius, can find no man who's her intellectual equal, so, instead, marries her best friend with whom she grew up and who loves her unconditionally. Family, for this clan, includes much more than blood relations. Through the years, their family has expanded to embrace friends, neighbors, and refugees from society's margins. There's simple-minded Loony Lips and retarded rape victim DeeDee; Therese's schoolteacher Lara who becomes Danielle's life partner; Letta, the unwed mother with nowhere to go; the self-defrocked cleric whose passion for life overwhelms his passion for religion; Crooked Finger, the learned but dour hermit friend of Antonia and her offspring -- all these, and more, come to reside with Antonia. It is in this context that Antonia wakes up, at the beginning of the movie, knowing that this will be the day of her death. Surrounded by good company and ample evidence of a life well-spent, Antonia is ready to partake in the miracle of death -- a miracle because it's a natural part of the brave mystery of life. Dutch filmmaker Marleen Gorris (who is perhaps best known for her gripping polemical narrative, A Question of Silence) has learned with Antonia's Line how to imbue her polemics with a more inclusive humanism. In the process, she has created a feminist fable for all time.