BLOODY MARIE

By Guido VAN DRIEL, Lennert HILLEGE

BULLETPROOF CUPID - as PROD

Drama - Completed 2019

Marie Wankelmut, once successful graphic novelist, lives in the Amsterdam red-light district. Being a drunk and a loose cannon, she gets into one conflict after another. A horrific sobering incident in the house next door forces her to take action and get her life back on course.

Festivals
& Awards

Rotterdam IFFR 2019
International Premiere
    • Year of production
    • 2019
    • Genres
    • Drama, Thriller
    • Countries
    • NETHERLANDS, BELGIUM
    • Languages
    • DUTCH, GERMAN, ENGLISH, ROMANIAN
    • Budget
    • 1 - 3 M$
    • Duration
    • 83 mn
    • Director(s)
    • Guido VAN DRIEL, Lennert HILLEGE
    • Writer(s)
    • Guido VAN DRIEL, Lennert HILLEGE
    • Producer(s)
    • Floor ONRUST (FAMILY AFFAIR FILMS)
    • Synopsis
    • German Marie Wankelmut (Susanne Wolff) has lived in the Amsterdam red-light district for over twenty years and once had great success with her graphic novel Porn for the Blind. She is currently haunted by guilt over the death of her mother who lived in the same canal house as her. Marie drinks and ponders, unable to find inspiration for a new graphic novel. She gets increasingly lonely and only her dog Lieze is an unconditionally loyal friend. She should rent out her dead mother’s apartment but she can’t. Even the psychic doctor Oscar Dokie (Jan Bijvoet), who tells Marie that her mother has forgiven her, is unable to help her change her way of life. She hasn’t properly dealt with the past yet.

      Marie keeps on drinking and keeps getting into trouble. She trades her red shoes for half a bottle of her neighbour Dragomir’s (Dragos Bucur) whiskey. Later, when she spots her shoes through an open window, she decides to take them back and she sets out on a hazardous undertaking across the wintry Amsterdam roofs. But Marie leaves her shoes where they are and instead steals the wads of cash that seem to be there for the taking, leaving the prostitutes that live in the apartment to fight over the money she took. Now Marie feels twice as guilty. One night, when things appear to really get out of hand next door, Marie decides to return the
      money.

      She finds herself in a world with a totally different morality. A terminally ill pimp (Mark Rietman) observes a prostitute who is bleeding to death. Marie manages to escape but the sick pimp kidnaps her dog Lieze. With the aid of one of the prostitutes Marie retrieves her dog, lying next to the dying pimp. While they are both waiting patiently for what is to come, Marie makes her first drawing in years. Her inspiration is back.