User Reviews

A vulnerable and sensitive soul, Stefan Pielek gives up on his job as a florist. He also gives up on life. However, citizens can only commit suicide after obtaining an official permit. While waiting for the permit and drifting around aimlessly, Pielek happens to meet an old lady who fled her care home. After witnessing her death in a freak accident, he goes looking for Betty, her young granddaughter...

In spite of its English title, this is a Dutch-speaking movie from Flanders, the northern and Dutch-speaking part of Belgium. The title is the name of a delicious yellow rose.

I dimly recall reading "Golden Ophelia", probably at school. If I remember it well, "Golden Ophelia" was set in a seriously dystopic society beset by bureaucracy, in which even the desire to commit suicide needed to be validated by a permit. The movie, however, doesn't try or achieve much in the way of world-building. By the same token it doesn't provide much information about the protagonist's past, problems or ambitions.

This provides the movie with a general air of ambiguity - is our protagonist living in contemporary Belgium, or in something that just looks like contemporary Belgium ? And is he being surrounded by greedy, corrupt, irrational fellow citizens, or is this an impression brought on by a mental disease such as depression ? (Most sufferers from clinical depression feel that they have strayed into a confusing, dangerous universe inhabited by confusing, dangerous people. As a result depression is characterized not only by isolation and alienation, but also by fear.) It is a tale about loneliness, that much is clear, but it is not clear how much of the story is happening in the outside world or in the protagonist's mind. Moreover, the dialogue tends to sound artificial, which makes it difficult to suspend disbelief. I can't speak for everyone, but for me these factors took away much of my viewing pleasure.

The ending, sadly, isn't very well done. A better writer or director could have provided a crashing conclusion or a searing denouement.

(Mind you, Ann Petersen is pretty funny as one of the unkind harpies undermining Pielek's faith in humanity. Watch her campaign for a noble cause, to wit the universal possession of expensive fur coats...)

It's not an entirely bad movie - the musical score is good, for instance - but it smells, nay reeks of inexperience and missed opportunities. I strongly suspect the source novel by Ward Ruyslinck is better.