"Antonia's Line" A Film Review by Linda Lopez McAlister on "The Women's Show" WMNF-FM 88.5, Tampa, FL April 20, 1996 It is terribly frustrating to be a film lover, especially one interested in women and film, living in a third-rate film town like Tampa. Though the Tampa Theater tries to bring the interesting films you want to see, with just one screen it can only do so much. So we sometimes have to wait months to see things that people in real cities have long since seen. A particularly egregious example of this is the fact that "Antonia's Line"--a feminist film by Dutch filmmaker Marlene Gorris that won the Academy Award for best foreign film of 1995--still hasn't arrived in Tampa and for all I know may never grace our local screens. The good news is that if you are willing to drive to Sarasota you can catch it, courtesy of the Sarasota Film Society, at the Burns Court Cinema (located between Palm and Pinapple, South of Ringling in downtown Sarasota). Actually, I've been waiting for years to see another Marlene Gorris film. Her first one, back in 1981, was "A Question of Silence," a striking radical feminist film about three average Amsterdam women whose frustration with patriarchy finally boils over and they murder a male shopkeeper, and about the radicalization of the woman psychiatrist assigned to determine their sanity and ability to stand trial. Her second film "Broken Mirrors" had virtually no distribution in this country--certainly not in places like Tampa-- so I never have been able to see it, although I understand it's a marvelous film dealing with violence against women. Now with what is (I think) Gorris's third feature, she has achieved international acclaim. Although she seems to have mellowed quite a lot and this is very much a positive, feel good, kind of film, I'm happy to report that her feminism remains firmly intact. So for feminist/womanist film lovers, this one is a must see film. What Gorris attempts here (and succeeds brilliantly with) is a family chronicle, following not the male line, as is the usual drill in such stories, but the female. The only film I've seen that is comparable to this is the Mexican gem "Like Water for Chocolate." Both are told in flashback by a contemporary woman-- in that case by a great-grand niece, and in this case by Antonia's great granddaughter--and both have hearty dollops of what is sometimes called "magical realism" and the sense that the spirits of those we have close connections with are never far away from our reality. Antonia returns in the aftermath of World War II to the tiny Dutch farm village she had left twenty years earlier, her teenage daughter in tow. She comes to bury her mother, who has a few choice things to say before she finally expires. Then Antonia and her daughter, Danielle, set about making a new life farming the land they inherited and finding the niche in this community that they can be comfortable in. There are some old friends such as the reclusive scholar Crooked Finger and the inn keeper Olga. There's a widowed farmer who wants Antonia to become the mother to his five sons and is dumbfounded when she doesn't see this as a wonderful opportunity he has offered her. She allows him to be her friend for many years before she finally decides--on her terms--to become his lover, not wife. When Danielle decides she wants a child but doesn't want a husband in the bargain, she and Antonia go to the city to find a likely father. They find him in a relative of a woman they befriend in an unwed mother's shelter (it is the 1950s after all), who joins Antonia's growing extended family and gives birth to 12 kids over the years . Copyright 1996. All rights reserved. Please do not copy or reprint this review without the permssion of the author: mcaliste@chuma.cas.usf. du.