The Last Days of Emma Blank

Emma is a lady living in high style, surrounded by family members who double as maids and servants. Everyone hopes Emma’s bad health will soon do her in, letting them inherit her substantial wealth.'

TIFF: Behold The Last Days of Emma Blank: a dark comedy so cynical it's bound to make your head spin. The director even casts himself as a dog. Alex van Warmerdam pushes his way forward with a brilliant adaptation of a near-impossible screenplay. Originally written for the stage, Ms. Blank's antics emigrate gracefully to the big screen while she most definitely does not. She's not meant to.

A raging lunatic stuck in a big black house, Ms. Blank is surrounded by friends and family who are eagerly awaiting her death. Cantankerous and tyrannical, she poses as an eccentric millionairess, forcing her husband and daughter to serve as the household staff. Additional kitchen help is provided by other members of her immediate family, hoping for a favourable mention in her last will and testament. The only problem is that she's taking an awfully long time to die and is absolutely impossible in the meantime.

Emma's sex-bomb daughter and maid, Gonnie (promising newcomer Eva van de Wijdeven), seeks carnal relief in a stranger, while everyone else routinely tries her bedroom door each night in case of a lucky break. Gonnie's father, the butler, similarly finds refuge in the plump cook, Bella (the director's wife and regular collaborator, Annet Malherbe). Meanwhile, Emma demands eel for breakfast, says no when she means yes, screams yes when she means no and generally does her best to drive everyone up the walls.

Fearlessly wading into a world of extremes, The Last Days of Emma Blank works precisely because everything seems so normal. Casting the Dutch dunes in a prominent role, van Warmerdam has the remaining characters communicate in a void of logic, yet their outrageous exchanges sound perfectly ordinary. Isolated, yet strangely universal, this film is a mystery as much as an open-and-shut case of immaculate comic timing.

Dimitri Eipides

Alex van Warmerdam was born in Haarlem, the Netherlands, and studied graphic design and painting at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie in Amsterdam. In addition to his work as a director, painter, writer, actor and designer, he co-founded the theatre companies Hauser Orkater and De Mexicaanse Hond. He has directed several short films and the features Abel (86), The Northerners (92), The Dress (96), Little Tony (98), Grimm (03), Waiter (06) and The Last Days of Emma Blank (09).