Sweet Dreams
If Knives Out weren’t a lark it would look something like Sweet Dreams (Zoete Dromen), a thriller from the Netherlands where the usual murder mystery is sharpened by a hit of oppression mixed with anti-colonial hatred. It’s a lovely-looking, lushly colourful movie set around 1900 in the Dutch East Indies where the white colonists are running a sugar-factory concern and living the high life indoors – dressing entirely in white for dinner, dining on sucking pig – while the brown folk do all the work outdoors. Unlike the usual Agatha Christie-style whodunit, all the sublimated stuff gets given its moment in the sun. There are servants who they simmer with resentment. There are natives … Read more