The Dutch film, We takes place in a small, Dutch-Belgium border village where eight, bored, nihilistic, hedonistic teenagers decided to spend the summer indulging in debauchery.
These upper-crust kids turn to orgies, drugs, prostitution and pornography to get their kicks in the most snooze-fest possible. A typical slow burn European movie, We is based on the novel by Elvis Peeters, which I hope is far more exciting than this picture.
One would think that a film dealing with blackmail and perversions with the taking down of the bourgeoisie would be white knuckle intense. Instead, the teens are bland with breakdown from an egalitarian eight turns into a totalitarian relationship with one character basically turning into a Stalin-esque character. When one of the girls in the group dies in the most idiotic way possible, the crew turns to taking down local politicians who had sexual relations with them while they were on their prostitution kick.
We seriously took me five hours to finish this 100 minute movie. I had to take a nap because this thing was so exhausting. If I wanted to stick with troubled youth movies, no one does it better than Larry Clark. Frankly, this movie felt more like a rip-off of his film Bully, troubled, drugged out kids, on trial for the murder of someone in their crew, only that person was the bad guy. Clark’s movies at least deal the darker side of youth in a thought provoking manner. Sadly, Rene Eller couldn’t do that with We. According to Eller’s IMDB page, this is his feature film debut and luckily, the only way to go is up.
Our own Sean Mulvihill would compare something like this to a faberge egg. It’s pretty to look at, but completely hollow. There is no substance, there is no justice and everyone involved threats it as a bad dream…kind of like sitting through We.
We is available on Blu-ray and DVD today and on VOD/Streaming April 14, 2020. Don’t bother, unless you want to pretend to be cultured in watching a film that only six people will probably see.
Summary
We as a whole, should avoid We. It’s not controversial, just bland.
