CHARACTER (KARAKTER) Official Competition

This tale opens with a bloodied young lawyer named
Katadreuffe (Fedja van Huet) being arrested for the
murder of an important and feared citizen, bailiff
Dreverhaven (Jan Decleir), who also happens to be his
father. Flashbacks give the accused’s version of the events
leading to the crime, beginning before his birth.
Katadreuffe’s mother, (Betty Schuurman), was
Dreverhaven’s maid and gave in to his advances only once
before leaving his employ. After the fleeting liaison gave
her a son, she refused Deverhaven’s offers of marriage
leaving Katadreuffe to endure a childhood made
miserable by the taunts of his schoolmates anti the
embittered distance of the man he knew as his father…
Van Diem’s elegant, energetic direction produces an
array of fine performances, especially van Huet’s haunted,
searching Katadreuffe and Declier’s monolithic
Dreverhaven. Pie’s look is extremely impressive for its
grand scale and vivid period textures; if the filmmakers
were going for the feel of epic, the have succeeded
admirably. -Godfrey Cheshire, VARIETY