Moonlight
Reviewed by Cathy Edsey Collins for Reel Movie Critic
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Cast
Laurien Van den Broeck	Claire
Hunter Bussemaker	The Boy
Andrew Howard	Gang leader
Jemma Redgrave	The Mother
Directed by Paula van der Oest. A dramatic thriller. NR (violence, language and some sexuality). Staccato Films. Running time: 90 minutes. From the Netherlands, in English with some French.

A provocative, riveting drama about lost youth, "Moonlight" captured numerous film festival awards, including Best Dutch Film at the Netherlands Film Festival. Drenched in an atmosphere of other-worldliness, this fourth feature film from Dutch director Paula van der Oest reaps much from her feminine point of view and ability to coax sensitive performances from her young lead actors.

"Moonlight" centers on an affluent thirteen-year-old, Claire, who discovers a wounded young boy in her garden. As an Afghanistan drug courier, the young boy's rectum has been stuffed with packages of cocaine. Upon delivery, he was to have been executed, but the boy managed to survive. When Claire finds him, rather than telling her icily distant parents, she decides to nurse him back to health.

Despite the language barrier, the twosome manages to communicate and realize that remaining at the garden shed has become too dangerous. On the run, they fall in love and hide out in her parents' unoccupied Luxembourg house. The tension escalates as their pursuers track them down, capture the duo, only to have them escape death once again. The story comes full circle at its shocking conclusion when Claire witnesses another young courier about to be murdered and heroically ends it all.

Upon closer inspection, this riveting drama loses points in the believability department. All of the suspense markers are firmly in place, and that certainly keeps the viewer glued to the screen, but the rash change in the character of Claire is simply to hard to swallow. This is a young girl whose background suggests education and a stable-albeit somewhat cold-home life. It is hard to fathom that she would go so far off the deep end for this young boy. Why not bring him to a hospital? Is her life so unexciting that she uses this incident to spice things up a bit? Don't her parents have a shred of suspicion regarding her time spent in the garden shed?

During their time on the lam, Claire never goes to the authorities with the boy. Surely he could have found more safety with the police. By the film's conclusion, Claire has lopped off her hair in a punk style, snorted cocaine, liquored up, and had sex with the boy. In the end, she somehow musters the guts to commit suicide. I cannot buy that the young girl playing the piano at the film's opening shots could do such a 180-degree transformation.

Yes, the performances are dynamic, the story line suspense-filled and gut-wrenching but the logic is out the window - undoubtedly obscured by the moonlight.