AllMovie

This drama by three young directors (Rene Seegers, Jean van de Velde, and Leon de Winter) is enhanced by its unique perspective: it contrasts the unappealing, industrialized, noisy, poor, and polluted world of today with an ideal view of the past. Herman Durer (Felix-Jan Kuipers) is a social dropout who has spent a bit of time behind bars and finds the concept of a job repugnant. Then one day he reads a book (itself unusual) about a leisurely, 18th-century life in Italy, just the kind of life he wants to lead. Armed with gritty determination and no sense, Herman leaves Amsterdam for the greener pastures of Italy. His imagination conjures up an 18th-century view of the world around him that stands in stark contrast to the reality he sees on his way to an unobtainable Shangri-la.