TRIBECA 2010: MY QUEEN KARO Review

In Dorothee van den Berghe's second feature, ten-year-old, Karo (Anna Franziska Jager) is on her way from Belgium to start a new life with her free radical parents (Deborah Francois & Matthias Schoenaerts) in Amsterdam.  Lovingly crafted with a wonder and effervescence that is not at all condescending, MY QUEEN KARO starts off as a tale of " the child as observer to the follies of adults".


With Karo and her costume designer mother, Daria, in toe, activist/artist father, Raven and his group of friends find a vacant floor of a warehouse loft space, perfect for their intended utopia of no walls, no rules and free love. Raven is an idealist to the death; a man unwilling to toy with the idea, let along apparent need, for money, the seeming leader of this small band of merry artists and non-conformists. Karo is impressed with her father's gentle command and passionate strive. Her mother, Daria, barely a woman herself (reportedly rescued from a boarding school by Raven) is gentle and quiet, willing to go along with her partner's utopian plans, that is until Raven meets sprite-like revolutionist Alice (Maria Kraakman), and takes her in as his new lover. With Alice moving into the commune, Karo finds herself exposed to an increasingly carefree sexual environment. And then comes the night when Karo discovers her mother, naked and weeping on the ledge, a night that opens up a veritable minefield of emotions.

The ratty bowl cut wearing, Jager weighs and balances the love for her mother and loyalty to her father as their relationship crumbles. She's feisty and stubborn but with a didactic calmness. Befriending the Polish swimmer turned prostitute downstairs, Karo finds refuge and a personal challenge in swimming lessons. As agendas turn sour in the commune, she fears for the well being of her beloved pet hedgehog, and decides to freeze him in the icebox until things look up. It is a moment like this where Jager's resilience and vulnerability shine. 
When Alice's children move into the commune, Karo is at first rightfully territorial and apprehensive towards Daniel and Tara, but soon enough they are her constant companions. And with a surprise summer trip to a rural island, Karo finds her first pre-pubescent love in Daniel, her "brother".

Francois (practically unrecognizable from her debut and most famous role in the Dardienne Brother's L'ENFANT) as Daria becomes increasingly distant, then defiant towards Raven, in this sexually translucent, idealistic unsound world. van den Berghe never sets Daria squarely as the victim, nor Schoenaert's Raven as the villain, or arguably even a bad man. Though crises looms, the film is never grim. Karo loves her parents, it is a subjective piece, and does not cast judgment on the adult's actions nor on the events or lifestyles of the era, of which Karo is not a passive witness to, but more and more apart of; as victim, as rescuer, and soon enough, as champion.

In the scenes where Karo is swimming, van den Berghe shapes from the underwater state of being, a luminous, ever strange passageway which straddles childhood and adulthood. In this world, Karo is able to find self-reliance, and an understanding to the flow of things, and that change will always be coming. There is a light and mood here which perfectly captures the overall whimsical and melancholic cadence to van den Berghe's visual lyricism.
 
MY QUEEN KARO is an able film reminiscent of the gentle splendor in Lasse Halstrom's MY LIFE AS A DOG, and while the film itself is not as dark as CRIA CUERVOS or SPIRIT OF THE BEEHIVE, those two seminal childhood pictures starring Ana Torrent, Jager does share something with the young Torrent: a wide eyed wonder and fear... ink black eyes which drink up the world, and give back to us, the universe.