A One Mann’s Movies review of “Holland” (2025).
Currently showing on Prime Video, “Holland” stars Nicole Kidman and Matthew Macfadyen as a married couple living in Holland, Michigan, with each having mutual suspicions about the other’s fidelity.
Bob the Movie Man Rating:
“Holland” Plot:
Living the American Dream in the township of Holland in Michigan, it’s all smiles and tulip parades for teacher Nancy Vandergroot (Nicole Kidman) and her dentist husband Fred (Matthew Macfadyen). But when Nancy starts getting suspicions about her husband’s fidelity during his many business trips away, she turns to her dishy new Mexican teaching colleague Dave Delgado (Gael GarcÃa Bernal). But is it perhaps Fred who should be more worried about his wife’s new friend?
Certification:
UK:Â 18+ (Prime Video rating);Â US: R. (This film has not been reviewed and rated by the BBFC.)
Talent:
Starring: Nicole Kidman, Matthew Macfadyen, Gael GarcÃa Bernal, Jude Hill.
Directed by: Mimi Cave.
Written by: Andrew Sodroski.
Running Time: 1h 50m.
“Holland” Summary:
Positives:
- The concept of the film, in its initial stages – with the mutual marital mistrust – is quite intriguing.
- The three leads – Kidman, Macfadyen and Bernal – all give good performances.
Negatives:
- The film goes off the deep end in the final reel.
Review of “Holland”:
Kidman yet again “Ain’t Got No Satisfaction”.
It feels like we are almost in “Babygirl” territory again with this one. Kidman, playing Nancy, is a bird living in a gilded, apparently perfect, cage. But she is getting no sexual satisfaction from husband Fred. As Antonio Banderas does in “Babygirl“, Fred gets his oats and then rolls off her to sleep, leaving Nancy to masturbate herself to her orgasm. Instead of Harris Dickinson’s Samuel, she is here thinking of Gael GarcÃa Bernal’s Dave while getting off. (Bernal is a mere 11 years younger than Kidman.)
The dynamic here had me quite intrigued, since – as the film develops – it is Nancy who finds the random parking tickets and private credit card stubs, throwing suspicion on Fred’s faithfulness. Yet it is Nancy who is DEFINITELY lusting after Dave.
General scrambling around.
The middle reel of the film involves a lot of scrambling around by Nancy and Dave trying to gather evidence, including a botched dental office heist and surveillance at a hotel. The latter generates one of the only true bits of tension in the film (although I really don’t understand the way it was resolved!).
Where the wheels rather came off for me was in the final reel where a “twist” is revealed and we descend into fairly formulaic fair with a side order of ‘ridiculous decisions’. It’s not that it’s ‘terrible’… it’s just that we’ve seen this sort of thing too many times before. I rather wish that the film had stuck to its infidelity-suspicions knitting.
The acting is fine.
All the leads give good performances, with Matthew Macfadyen continuing his post-“Succession” movie career after “Deadpool & Wolverine“. It’s also great to see Jude “Belfast” Hill back on the big screen again, playing Fred and Nancy’s son Harry.
Nice sense of time and place.
Another ‘actor’ in the film is the town of Holland, which I personally didn’t know existed. Wiki reports that “Holland was settled in 1847 by Dutch Calvinist separatists… dire economic conditions in the Netherlands compelled them to emigrate, while their desire for religious freedom led them to unite and settle together as a group.” So there you go. But it makes sense that they should engage in suitably Dutch traditions such as the buildings (like the Windmill) and the events (like the Tulip festival).
The setting of the film in time is also not stated, but with the tech on show (e.g. pagers – God, I hated that thing!) it looks and feels like the late 1990’s. Pitching it then, before the age of the internet and the ubiquity of the mobile phone, is sensible, since with many of the searching and tracking capabilities we have today, the plot would struggle to work!
Summary Thoughts on “Holland”
I’d originally given this 3-stars based on the initial premise of the film being good and the first part being well-executed. But I’ve downgraded it a bit, since it became so cookie-cutter that I will honestly struggle to remember it in a few months time.
Where to Watch it (Powered by Justwatch)
Trailer for “Holland”:
The trailer is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IJm3LHoqdA4. There are actually a few spoilers after 1m15s, but up to then you get a good feeling for the film without it giving anything away.
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