In the occupied Netherlands near the end of WWII, a young teenager, Jeroen Boman (Maarten Smit) is sent to the Dutch countryside to avoid the war in Amsterdam. While living with his adopted family, Jeroen meets and becomes friends with a Canadian soldier named Walt Cook, who is stationed at the same town he is staying at. Joroen and Walt spend a lot of time playing around and eventually a romantic relationship develops between them. The boy’s sexual curiosity leads him to have a sexual experience with Walt, an encounter that is shown with some vague detail but without actually showing any nudity, even though sexual intimacy between the two of them is implied. Overall, the movie handles this difficult subject with an elegant style and feeling, without having the adult-child relationship overwhelm the viewer and thus allowing the movie to be seen as just a wartime relationship between two people that marks an important time in a young boy’s life.
Maarten Smit
as Jeroen Boman (young)
Jeroen Krabbé
as Jeroen Boman (adult)
Andrew Kelley
as Walt Cook
Freark Smink
as Hait
Elsje de Wijn
as Mem
Derk-Jan Kroon
as Jan
Wiendelt Hooijer
as Henk
Iris Misset
as Bonden
Gineke de Jager
as Elly
Tatum Dagelet
as Gertie
Marie-José Kouwenhoven
as Renske
Valerie Valentine
as Laura
