PopSixSquish What a beautiful, affecting story. Twin sisters from Holland, raised by gay fathers, travel to the US to help out the injured birth mother they've never met. One is serious, uptight, hardworking, career-obsessed; she has issues to work out with the misogynistic, belittling boss who undervalues her. The other is sunny, fun-loving, optimistic, family-oriented; she has issues to work out with her controlling, infantilizing husband. (Yeah, a bit of a Twilight Sparkle/Pinkie Pie dynamic.) The former has never let herself waste time wondering about their "womb," while the latter has always had a bit of an obsession with her visions of their American hippie mom. Yes, there are rotten male characters (on top of the boss and husband, the sisters get assaulted by a despicable group of men outside a tavern), but they're balanced by good ones, and the movie doesn't shove any ham-fisted or misandrist messages down your throat. It's 'feminist,' not obnoxious.The film is carried by excellent performances from the three leading ladies. Carice is truly an extraordinary gem every single time--she's impossibly beautiful AND irresistibly adorable ("cuteiful," I daresay), crazy-good at acting and emoting, graceful, dainty, etc. Her natural wide-eyed innocence and vulnerability can also seep into a character just enough to render her more sympathetic in moments where perhaps the same role, filled by another actress, might not be. Everything she's in is simply so much better than it would be without her. Jelka holds her own alongside her sister and Holly. And Holly? Is every bit as great as you'd naturally anticipate, in the role of the mother who's definitely not what anyone expects. I found myself wondering whether these characters might in any way connect with the van Houtens' real-life personalities and relationship. It's a journey of self-discovery, bonding, learning, love, and growth, and things develop quite interestingly as we learn more and more of Jackie. The drama is amped up by such debacles as running out of gas in the middle of the desert, a terrifying snakebite, being attacked by rapists, the sisters' personal problems, and so on, while the end takes an unforeseen turn. I'd have liked it if both sisters got to do karaoke, since Carice sings wonderfully as well, but that's not an inherent quibble with the script, which gave Sofie her own rewards.This is also the kind of film whose glorious scenery and RV theme spark in me nostalgia for family vacations and road trips, and stoke my own sense of wanderlust. It's gorgeous and should definitely be on people's watchlists.

birck I enjoyed this film, whether because of or in spite of some of its peculiarities, I know not. Two young adult dutch sisters, with lives in Holland as problematic as anybody's, get word that their absentee American mother has gone into a hospital in New Mexico, dare each other to take on the job, and wind up still together, meeting her for the first time at a rehab center in the States. The story is of how they all get to know each other and how the sisters are able to make some changes of their own, thanks to the journey. Oddly, many sexes are represented here, but decent non-macho, non-dickhead males are thin on the ground. To be fair, that doesn't seem to be a poke at Americans, since the sisters have the same issues to deal with back in Amsterdam-and are forced to deal with them via Skype during the road trip; just odd. Another oddness is that the filmmakers set and shot the story in a New Mexico that could have been the location for "the Road". It's a flat, barren wasteland that looks more like the deserts of West Texas or Oklahoma than like anybody's Land of Enchantment. Their trip takes them through one cruddy jerkwater roadhouse after another. That serves to point out that, yes, some Europeans do like American Country-Western music. But what happened to the Rocky Mountains, Santa Fe and Albequerque? New Mexico can be spectacular, but the director seems to have chosen what she found under a rock instead. Odd. If for no other reason, this film is worth watching for the "Dykes on Bikes" sequence. I will say no more.

markyd-329-720968 There are excellent performances by the 3 actresses here. Holly Hunter gives a mysterious and intense performance as the fabled and unknown mother, since the daughters grew up in the Netherlands and mom, a surrogate mother, lives in New Mexico. (These are not spoilers since this part of the plot is laid out within the first few minutes of the movie, and reported elsewhere.) There are some nice insights into the lives of twin sisters growing up without a mother, since their parents are 2 men. There is no political or moral statement about this, just a natural occurrence without a woman in their lives. The intriguing thing is how both sisters reacted quite differently. As the plot moves along, these differences are fleshed out. They must also confront their childhood fantasies about "Mother" when they come into contact with the wonderfully strange Hunter character. The cinematography is delicious, given the New Mexico locations.Though this is an unconventional reunion story, Adoptees, Birth Mothers and others who wound up in families by non-conventional means will share in the sense of loss these sisters have experienced as well as the inner journey they both must navigate. However, the plot itself crashes along in a nonsensical way at times, and as things build towards a perceived happy ending, the contrived action overwhelms! In such a short period of time, insights and redemption and connection and breakthroughs and awakenings and, etc ..., they come so fast and furious that the "heart string pulling machine" was on overdrive as the plot becomes gratuitously formulaic.However, during this time when I wanted to walk out of the movie, others were crying and cheering, so you may see it differently.Other plot devices used in this movie will have to go uncritiqued because of spoiler issues.

Liv Poulsen The movie is about two dutch sisters who travel to America to meet their mother who has been gone for their whole lives. She is in the hospital with a fractured leg, and she needs to be transferred to a centre for rehabilitation. But the mother is a bit strange. She doesn't seem very happy to see her children. They travel together many kilometers in the mothers minibus, they get a lot of new experiences and their lives change forever. It is a great movie, and the story with the two sisters seeing their mother again is great. It is funny and a specially the ending is a bit overwhelming. The ending comes very unexpected, and one could think that the movie could have been much better and more worth watching if the ending had been different.