Holland is more than a Nicole Kidman “What’s going on with my husband” movie. For starters, the Amazon Studios thriller is campier than her earlier projects. Gone are the perfectly coiffed hairdos and immaculately clean white walls of her wealth-focused projects like The Perfect Couple or Big Little Lies. Instead, busy and dated wallpaper lines the interior of her cottage-y (literally, the fruit pattern from my grandmother’s kitchen makes an appearance in this film). Instead, Holland attacks the ideal American dream from a different angle — and comes out as convoluted as a film can be.
Kidman plays Nancy Vandergroot, a lonely mother to Harry (Belfast’s Jude Hill doing the best American accent I have ever heard from a child) and wife to Fred (Matthew Macfadyen). The high school home economics teacher spends her free time drumming up everyday drama like blaming her child’s babysitter for stealing a singular earring.
Her husband is the town optometrist and moved his wife to Holland, Michigan, in the late ‘80s for stability and to live out the American dream. He seems to tolerate his wife at best, using their perfect life to keep her in line. We don’t know much about why Nancy’s life was so bad before but we know she doesn’t want to go back to it and credits Fred for saving her. He is obsessed with model trains and has their son join in on the hobby. When he goes to one too many medical conferences for her liking, Nancy starts to suspect he is having an affair and pulls shop teacher Dave Delgado (Gael García Bernal) into her quest to catch him.
Like director Mimi Cave’s last film, there’s a big twist. Unlike Fresh, you can guess what it is early on. Cave isn’t very subtle about what it is, but focuses so much on Nancy’s marriage paranoia that you forget about it for a while. Because Kidman is so seasoned you kind of fall in love with Nancy and her kookiness, but her antics eventually cause the film to drag. Matthew Macfadyen plays condescending so well that he disappears into his role, while Bernal sort of fades into Kidman’s shadow.
Current comedy queen Rachel Sennott pops up for one brief scene at the beginning and gets fifth billing. You wonder where she is going to show up again for the rest of the movie. Why have Sennott in your film if you are not going to use her? I wonder if maybe her scenes were cut but still her presence is missed.
Like Fresh, Cave’s pacing accelerates towards the end, aiming to wrap everything up quickly. It’s less successful here and to be honest, confusing. Andrew Sodroski’s script leaves more questions than answers, and the film’s last ten minutes will make you question what you have spent nearly the last two hours doing.
However, this movie is so specific in its production design, setting, and use of time (it takes place in 2000), that you can’t help but be captivated by the vibe of it all. It reminded me a Hitchcockian thriller, the good and bad ones, that keep you guessing until the end, even if it leaves you guessing and pointing out the plot holes.
Holland is streaming on Prime Video now. Watch the trailer below.
