Left Luggage
by Jeroen Krabbé
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DVD details
Actor: Adam Monti, Adam Monty, Isabella Rossellini, Jeroen Krabbé, Laura FraserDirector: Jeroen Krabbé
Producer: Ate de Jong
Producer: Brad Wilson
Producer: Craig Haffner
Producer: Dave Schram
Producer: Dirk Impens
Writer: Carl Friedman
Writer: Edwin de Vries
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Original Language); Hebrew (Original Language); Yiddish (Original Language)
Format: Color, DVD, NTSC
Picture Format: 1.33:1
Running Time: 100 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2001-07-10
Audience Rating: Unrated
Studio: Fox Lorber
DVD Reviews of Left Luggage
DVD Review: Wonderful film, but wish it had been longer
Summary: 4 Stars
This film brings up a number of important issues, issues that one doesn't see often in more mainstream big-budget films. It's set in Belgium in the early Seventies, and Chaja, the main character, is caught up in the student movements and youth politics of the day. She's quite detached from the Jewish identity of her parents, who are Shoah survivors, and their friends. Due to the era in which this film takes place, most of the survivors are only middle-aged, still relatively young, instead of the aging people we picture them as today. However, after quitting her restaurant job in disgust at the beginning of the film, she, through her family friend Mr. Apfelschnitt, finds employment as a nanny for a Hassidic family, the Kalmans. It is through this job, which she initially also felt like walking away from, that she develops a reconnection to her faith and to her heritage. She is also persuaded to keep the job because of one of the Kalmans' children, four year old Simcha, who is autistic and very attached to her. Both because of her growing affection for the Kalmans and her reconnection to her roots, she is forced to re-examine a number of things in her life, such as the latent anti-Semitism of her roommate and supposed best friend Sofie and the openly anti-Semitic and even downright cruel and abusive landlord and elevator-operator in the Kalmans' apartment. One wishes that there were more films of this nature being made about the Hassidic community, giving an accurate and fair and balanced portrayal, instead of offensive and untruthful garbage like 'Kadosh' and 'A Price Above Rubies.' There's also the subplot of Chaja's father's obsessive decades-long search to find the luggage he buried the night before he had to leave his family behind and go into hiding from the Nazis; hence the film's title. A third, more minor, subplot concerns their neighbors the Goldmans; Mr. Goldman is a prolific philatelist, which really angers and frustrates his wife, who feels that he cares more about his stamps and pays more attention to them than to her and their marriage. I was also excited to learn that it was based on a novel, which I hope to find a copy of eventually.
However, as wonderful and touching as this film is, I just wish it had been somewhat longer. I felt it ended just when things were really getting involving and full of tension, everything really coming to a head. There could have easily been another 30 minutes or so of working out the events that were transpiring instead of more or less ending without a great deal of resolution to all of these great subplots that had so much more dramatic potential. The ending seems more depressing and unresolved than anything else, even though of course not all films are meant to have happy sunshiny endings or to make the viewer feel good. And I know that Chaja's character is meant to be a thoroughly modern woman of the Seventies, and someone who has no real love for or interest in her religion, but I thought it was a bit unrealistic how at first she was going over to the Kalmans' and taking their kids out to the park dressed in miniskirts and jeans. Surely Mr. Apfelschnitt (who is religious) would have told her that those just aren't acceptable outfits when in the company of Hassidic people; whether or not one dresses like that in one's own world shouldn't preclude having respect for the conventions of modesty of one's hosts. She was a guest in their house, and a guest on shaky ground at best at first, not the other way around! It also seems a bit unrealistic how Sofie has no idea, until Chaja informs her of this fact during the skinny-dipping scene pretty far into the film, that her best friend is Jewish. How many Belgian women their age would have had such an overtly Hebrew name like that in the Seventies, or even in any era, unless they were Jewish? And wouldn't she have known from Chaja telling her about her family life anyway? (As for the skinny-dipping scene itself, yes we see full frontal nudity in both women, but it only lasts for a second or so, and besides, there's absolutely nothing sexual or pornographic about it. Not all nudity is automatically adult in context or inappropriate for children, unless one is teaching children that all nudity is inherently shameful and dirty, and only exists in a sexual context, which I would consider far more inappropriate than a very brief and innocent scene of full frontal nudity.)
Overall, this is a very thought-provoking film, one that doesn't offer any easy answers about complex issues, but rather leaves it up to the different characters to work out their own answers and ideas. All of these characters have their own "left luggage," and all come to different conclusions as to how to resolve it. Though it does have obviously strong Jewish content, and therefore some references or terms which might not be fully understood by outsiders to the faith, it's also a film that's easily-accessible to people of all religions.
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