Everything on the table

The title Everything on the Table immediately tells you about the great talent of Frank Houtappels, the man who translated the originally Italian script to ‘ours’. This elevated the title Perfetti Sconosciuti (perfect strangers, loosely translated) six floors higher because the title carries so much more.

The recipe: a group of friends comes together for an innocent dinner where the idea arises that everyone puts their phone on the table and that every message or phone call is collectively read, listened to, viewed, and answered. Indeed: fodder for a lot of misery. And that, of course, happens.

Peter Paul Muller is masterful. And slim and handsome, but that aside. But that you play the husband of Linda again and portray such a restrained, warm, smart, witty, refined man. I won't give anything away, but the scene where he has their daughter on the phone and guides her through one of the hardest decisions of her life, I will simply never forget.

Linda = Linda = Linda and she always scores at least a nine. If someone thinks of or discovers something that she can't do well, I'll hear about it, but I haven't been able to discover it. Oh, and Lies Visschedijk and Ramsey Nasr, that's of course a dream duo.

Did I find something less about this film? Well, the casting of both Eva Crutzen and Diederik Ebbinge made it difficult for me to wipe away the Promenade feeling, and I felt that in some scenes there was a bit too eagerly scooped from the pan of coincidences. Because which jeweler calls on a Saturday night at 9:30 PM to ask his client if his girlfriend liked the earrings (which you apparently gave to your mistress)?
But the Dutch creators can't do anything about that, thank goodness Frank Houtappels was there again to write that existing script to fit these actors. Oh, if only I could be the cup of tea on the corner of his writing desk for an afternoon...

Alles op tafel will be in theaters starting Thursday.

Image: Millstreetfilms.nl