North Sea Texas [Noordzee, Texas] **** (2011, Jelle Florizoone, Mathias Vergels, Eva Van Der Gucht) – Classic Movie Review 12,342

Jelle Florizoone stars brilliantly as Pim, a sweet young dreamer, who falls in love with his male best friend Gino (Mathias Vergels), in the provocative and charming 2011 Flemish drama romance film North Sea Texas, directed by Bavo Defurne in his feature directorial debut.

Pim is a quiet, intense teenage boy living with his randy and reckless over-weight mother Yvette. As Pim gets infatuated with handsome boy-next-door Gino, he grabs his chance to leave home and move in with Gino’s family after a man from the local fair starts living at his mother’s house. Then Gino goes off to live with a girl from across the border, but one rainy day he returns…

North Sea Texas is a captivating, constantly surprising and eye-opening gay film, extremely impressive both emotionally and visually, and tremendously well acted under difficult circumstances by an intense Jelle Florizoone. Eva Van Der Gucht is just great as the blowsy, accordion playing, party girl mother Yvette, Mathias Vergels is very appealing as Gino, and Nina Marie Kortekaas is nice as the wayward lodger Sabrina, sister of Gino, who develops an unrequited crush on Pim.

This coming-of-age heart-warmer is imaginatively and beautifully photographed by Anton Mertens, and inventively directed by Bavo Defurne, and the script is subtle, tender and delicate, though it is ultimately probably the performances that make the film so special. There’s a good score too, by Adriano Cominotto.

See why Jelle Florizoone calls himself ‘That kid who jumped naked in the North Sea shouting the alphabet’. Whatever else he does in life, he’s always going to be that.

Defurne writes the screenplay with Yves Verbraeken, based on André Sollie’s Nooit gaat dit over.

The cast are Jelle Florizoone as Pim, Eva Van Der Gucht as Yvette, Mathias Vergels as Gino, Nina Marie Kortekaas as Sabrina, Katelijne Damen as Marcella, Luk Wyns as Etienne, Thomas Coumans as Zoltan, Ben Van den Heuvel as Young Pim, Patricia Goemaere as Simone Nathan Naenen as Young Gino, Noor Ben Taout as Young Sabrina, Ella-June Henrard as Françoise, Daniel Sikora as Maurice, and Victor Zaidi as Julien.

© Derek Winnert 2022 Classic Movie Review 12,342

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