Review of Afblijven

I saw this film for the first time in October 2006. The whole Dutch film business was talking about it: it was the first book of Carry Slee, a very popular Dutch writer who writes mostly for teenagers, of which was been made a film. Shootingstar, the production company of "Afblijven!" had organized a big casting day in March 2006. This is because they wanted to look for new talent in our country and give a chance to children who wanted to be in a movie and were not member of a casting agency. After three rounds, Sem Veeger, at that time 14 years old, was chosen to play Melissa, the girl which it is all about in the story. Apart from a Youth Theathre Education, Sem had never done anything with acting in a movie before, so it was kind of special that they picked her out of eight hundred other children. Sem has talent. She's got an enormous amount of power on screen, she really sort of "sucks you to her face": something in this girl makes you wanting to look at her. She's also pretty and has a nice voice. But there were parts she didn't do well, and it has been shown more than once that there are still a lot of things to learn for her. But she's got time of course! I think they picked the right one. Sem is a nice, intelligent girl who was ABLE to do this. She had fun on set and she grew more and more sure about herself. Did you know that she broke her calf muscle and had to do a dancing scene? Brave girl :). Matthijs van de Sande Bakhuyzen is one of the most talented people in this film. He is the son of the director Willem van de Sande Bakhuyzen who died last year. Afterall, this film is very nice. I already saw it six times. Sem is some sort of an example to me, because she's my age and I also want to be an actress. This film's got a lot of weird texts, that is not the most strong point of it. The acting is not always good, but the story is really nice.