Paulina (2015) User Reviews

Left me thinking- excellent

[laurautge · 9/10 · 28 June 2015]

If you wanna get all your beliefs shaken, watch this movie.

This is a story of two points of view, daughter and father confronting each other, in and ideological fight, were none of them wants to give up. She gets is raped by a gang, and then the movie really starts.

The interesting thing about this film is that most of the people probably agrees with the opinion of the father, but the main character in this film is her, so we can see through her eyes a different view about the world. The dialogs between she and her father are really good worked out. They build up realistic, psychological identity to both of them.

The actors are really good, even in the small characters. This is a movie for people that is looking to see a beautiful piece of human conflict.

Pointless

[deadtv1 · 2/10 · 7 December 2015]

In the original piece, the woman decides against acting against her rapists and lapses into religious lunacy and self-flagellation.

That is rather stupid, but at least it makes for some kind of explanation.

The writer of this remake evidently felt shy about the original's out-dated religious aspects, so he simply left those out, only to replace them with... nothing. A blank space where hysterical catholic guilt used to be. Although it becomes clear towards the end, when we see Paulina's "martyr's walk", that the explanation is basically the same.

The only thing that never becomes clear is what the point of this movie is. If there is a message, then it's a terrible one. If there is no message, then it's the most boring piece of exploitation I've ever watched.

The acting is alright. The boys had the best of it. Paulina's character was irritating from the start, so it's a bit hard to rate that actress' job. A victim of poor writing.

Illogical behavior of Pauline sometimes prevents seeing good points in this movie. Hefty discussions between daughter and father are essential and amply compensate some flaws

[JvH48 · 8/10 · 17 January 2017]

Seen as part of the Movies That Matter festival 2016 in The Hague, where it premiered for The Netherlands. We follow young lawyer Pauline who gives up a promising career and starts as a teacher in a suburban high school. Very enlightening were the hefty discussions between father and daughter, offering us a good insight in all arguments pro and con, more compact and more comprehensive than we could have imagined ourselves. Leaving this out would have resulted in a bare story, where we could only pity the main protagonist and dismiss her motives as being overly idealistic.

A huge problem for me remains that I cannot begin to grasp Paulina's motives, neither in the beginning to give up a potentially brilliant career, nor later on when continuing her tasks as a teacher after a rape incident, nor when deciding to keep the baby resulting from the rape. Also, when she has to identify suspected rapists standing in line in the police station, she pretends that she recognizes neither of them as one of the rapists, maybe a bit understandable given that all faces were known to her inside and outside class. But it becomes worse: at one point in a discussion with her father, when she states that if she would have been raped by her former boyfriend and got pregnant as a result, she would have chosen to abort the child, the very opposite of her stance in this case where she wants to keep it. I must have missed an important step in her logic, as this is utmost inconsistent.

It may be clear from the above that I could not identify myself with Pauline's motives, and could not help myself applauding all arguments made by her father about her career choice as well as her position in the gang rape and its aftermath. Possibly the script writers wanted to make a politically correct point that I cannot agree with. Anyway, seeing beyond Pauline's irritating logic this movie is very well made and the acting is also spotless.