Pic: © jaap-vrenegoor
The Glasgow Film Festival has an eclectic programme including some harsh and challenging films. Time to Spare is not one of these films. Optimistic and idealist through and through, it’s the festival’s sugar-coated antidote to films like In Darkness and Michael.
Time to Spare is a Dutch comedy telling the story of Maarten (Paul de Leeuw), a man who’s left to deal with empty nest syndrome after his younger sister Molly (Karina Smulders) moves out with her boyfriend.
Maarten is more a caricature than a real character - a melodramatic, camp man who’s just a little bit over-the-top to be lovable. He lives in an ideal world and, as you would expect from the genre, any dramatic story events seem comfortably contained within the safety of a glossy, utopian version of reality.
When the film steps into the end of the second act, though, it has to resort to a massive dose of tragedy to try and create a climax in this world of characters seemingly immune to personal turmoil. It does this by announcing that a character is both pregnant and has cancer at the same time.
Any other film could’ve handled this issue with sensitivity and poignancy. In the context of a feel-good comedy, however, this sort of story event doesn’t really fit. The awkward mix between a relentless saccharine feel and morbid tragedy is nothing more than bad taste.
Time to Spare is easily likeable, if a little too much so. Characters like Lineke Rijxman’s Reina offer more cynical witticisms, but the film is, as a whole, far too rose-tinted. With a few occasional laughs, Time to Spare is light entertainment which serves as an obnoxiously giddy counter-balance to the festival’s grittier films, but not much more.
MORE ON GFF 2012:
- For reviews, interviews and the latest news about the Glasgow Film Festival visit stv.tv/gff.
- For news, listings and tickets visit the Glasgow Film Festival website.
