My Mother and I

Nature or nurture, but "Kees" (Celeste Holsheimer) is a pain in the neck. She lives with her mother (Hannah van Lunteren) in Amsterdam but is coming to the age where she needs to spread her wings and start building her own nest - in Marseille. Naturally, her mum is a little anxious about this, but agrees to drive her daughter to her new student digs. Thanks to the behaviour of the young girl, their journey isn't without incident, yet still the mothering instinct is strong enough to avoid succumbing to any natural desire to throttle her selfish and frankly quite obnoxious child. Upon her arrival, it becomes clear that "Kees" no longer needs her chauffeuse - but when she wakes up the next morning, the stark reality of her new life isn't perhaps as welcome as she'd anticipated. Hats off to Holsheimer here as she delivers a performance that quite successfully got under my skin. Was I ever quite that self-centred? Would my parents have tolerated it for ten minutes? It's a reminder that growing up has pains for both generations and though a little superficial and maybe just a bit too devoid of humour, is still worth a gander.