Noordzee, Texas

Plot synopsis:
A young Pim and his mother, Yvette, live in the Belgian countryside with their dog, a Miniature Pinscher named Mirza. The mother, a lonely divorcee, plays a piano accordion, and patronizes a local bar called Texas. One day Pim and his mother attend a fair, where they meet a traveling carny named Zoltan. Zoltan is kind to the younger Pim, and Pim is infatuated. Zoltan rents a room in Yvette's home intermittently, but later stops coming to town. Meanwhile, Yvette begins spending time with a man named Etienne, who is brutish and macho, and whom Pim immediately despises.
As time passes, Pim develops a close friendship with the slightly older Gino, who becomes his best friend. Pim falls in love with Gino, and Gino explores his sexuality with the adoring Pim, and the two become increasingly intimate. They both agree to keep their sexual relationship a secret. Meanwhile, Gino's sister Sabrina develops feelings for Pim, and Gino nearly spends the night with a girl he is seeing named Francoise. Pim, seeing Gino kiss Francoise, commits an act of vandalism as revenge and a rift forms between the two friends. Sabrina subsequently finds out that Pim is gay, and Yvette breaks it off with the boorish Etienne. Around this time, the enigmatic Zoltan unexpectedly returns. Gino, growing uncomfortable with the complicated circumstances, begins pushing Pim away. Compounding the emotional roller coaster for Pim, he goes to Zoltan's room one evening, hoping to spend the night with him, only to find Zoltan out of his room and down the hall having sex with Pim's mother. Having long wanted Zoltan for himself, even before he fell in love with Gino, a distraught Pim runs off into the night. Devastated that he cannot be with Zoltan, He returns home to find his mother has left with Zoltan and left him a note. Pim takes Mirza and moves in with Sabrina, while Gino is living out of town with Francois.
Following the funeral of Gino and Sabrina's mother Marcella, Pim and Sabrina are seen living together, although the living arrangement is clearly platonic. On a rainy day, Gino returns. After Pim tells Gino that his sister isn't home, Gino tells Pim that it was he who Gino came home for. Gino gently grabs Pim and moves him against the wall. Gino returns a cloth with special meaning to them both to Pim, telling him to tie a knot in it so that he will never forget him. He then proceeds to kiss Pim on the neck and the two embrace one another passionately. Pim tells Gino to "stay," and the film ends with the two of them embracing each other, suggesting a happy ending for the young couple.

Tags: flashback

Review:
I think just about every gay man can relate to this movie, and remembers what it was like to have that first crush on someone.
North Sea Texas is a beautiful, well-crafted and well-shot film.
I'm not gay but regardless I fell in love with this film so much that I sat down to write a review here.So the premise goes like this...
Its about a boy named Pim (I'm not familiar with Dutch/Flemish culture but having seen a few of their films I think a lot of guys are named Pim) who is kind of an introvert, a dreamer, doesn't talk much and spends a lot of his time drawing the things he loves.
Young Pim meets a guy nearby, Gino who is three years older than him and eventually falls in love with him.
There is also Gino's sister Sabrina, who is the same age as Pim and their mother.Pim's mother, Yvette, on the other hand is a feckless woman who spends most of her time drinking, singing and playing accordion at a local bar.
These troubles cause him to hang out at his best friend Gino's place all the time; and also at a local drinking hole called Texas, after which the movie's named.
Gino's mother treats Pim like family and understands the fact that he is not lucky to have Yvette as his mother.If a write more I might just end up telling the entire story and BTW I didn't spoil anything for you.
The entire film rests on the character, Pim and his life and he just makes the character come alive.
Its a refreshing break over films where the characters indulge in a sleaze-fest all along and then, at the end, realise that love was here all along.
The 'coming-of-age' genre is really too broad to describe North Sea Texas, the first feature film from Belgian Director Bavo Defurne.
There have been many films which portray the highs and lows of adolescent gay love, but few which do so in a way which draws you into their world in such an imaginative and creative way.
The awkward silences, deserted roads and the long empty beach are symbolic of the emotional isolation of "dreamer" Pim. His only refuge being the place where he feels acceptance and understanding is with his 'surrogate' family - single mother Marcella, her daughter Sabrina, and son Gino - the subject of his love.Jelle Floorizoone, (Pim) carries the film with incredible maturity and professionalism, helped by an excellent cast of characters who add to the film's charm and depth.
As the boys grow older Gino drifts away from Pim, into the arms of a French girl, culminating in a confrontation of rage on an empty wind-swept beach.
Sometimes it takes the love of an understanding mother, through a simple gesture, to show that her son's choice may not be the right one.Having first seen North Sea Texas in the cinema earlier this year, and now again on DVD, it's a film that warrants repeated viewings.
Emotional and uplifting, North Sea Texas is one of the most engaging & original films about adolescent gay love since Danish Director Lasse Nielsen's ground-breaking "You Are Not Alone".Included on the DVD is a short but excellent Premiere Featurette and film trailer.
Compare it with 'Get Real', and 'A beautiful Thing' but better.It give an excellent idea how gay's explore their world in the 1950-1960's in Belgium..
This film is about a quiet and introverted young boy in Northern Belgium, who falls in love with the boy next door."North Sea, Texas" is a slow moving film, but it captures your attention by its great story telling.
For example, the film tells viewers that the town is underprivileged by minor details such as Gino's mother pouring sugar sachets into a jar, and Pim's mother wearing the same dress almost every time she goes out.
Towards the ending, there are scenes open to interpretation, leaving viewers to discuss what really happens."North Sea, Texas" is more of a film to feel and empathise.
It is a story about a gay boy (Pim) living with a negligent mother that is still trying to be young and free.
The boy develops a crush on this neighbor (Gino) who looks a lot like Harold from "Harold and Maude".
I ended up finding this dutch movie called North Sea Texas.
You have a teenage boy named Pim. He has mother who is a singer and accordion player.
Pim likes to dream about things including drawing pictures of Gino.There are some loves scenes in this movie between Pim and Gino.
This is an interesting movie about teenage boys who fall in love.
This movie shows a gay teenager named Pim whois a lot stronger that most people.
This reviewer draws a nice clear picture of the characters and plot in this odd Belgium indie film.
At the beginning I was not compelled to watch this movie due to the weird little boy but I stuck with it and I'm glad I did.Pim (the main character) is so sullen you'll wonder what's to become of him as his mother expresses no parenting skills and the only positive influences in his life seem to be the mother of his friend Gino and Pim's own imagination.
A young boy of maybe 10 or so, Pim, dresses up as a beauty queen, naked all but for a sash, his mother's jewelry and perfume.
His single mother, who likes men, maybe a bit too much, and to hang out in the local bar, Texas, doesn't scold him nor do the friendly neighbours he spends so much time with.
It is clear they, like us, can see the man the boy will become.When we next see Pim he's just turned 15 and is infatuated with the neighbour's 18 year old son, Gino, and we know his future is already mapped out.
Well, let's just say there are plenty of bumps along the way in his film "North Sea, Texas".In this country, of course, such stories of gay teenage sexuality would be virtually taboo where almost any depiction of sex in which either of the parties involved is under the age of consent is considered child abuse but those pesky foreigners have always lead the way in matters of the flesh, (remember Louis Malle's "Les Amants"?).
Here, we might describe this film as brave, even daring, but it's probably quite commonplace in its native Belgium.All the performances are good with Jelle Florizoone and Mathias Vergels as the teenage lovers, Pim and Gino respectively, slipping into their roles with remarkable ease while Nina Marie Kortekaas as Gino's younger sister, who has more than a crush on Pim, is also excellent.
After finding this movie on complete accident through IMDb's "People who liked this also liked" thing, I figured I'd give this film a shot.
Director Bavo Defurne has had a pretty successful career in writing, directing, and producing short films with the kind of active cinematography and intimacy his first feature film North Sea Texas has.
And let me say, North Sea Texas is no "Campfire." The story concerns a fourteen-year-old named Pim (Jelle Florizoone), who lives in the West Flemish area of France, circa 1970.
A neglected and unnoticed Pim begins to develop feelings for his seventeen-year-old neighbor, Gino (Mathias Vergels), which quickly turn sexual in the wake of Gino moving away with his girlfriend.
It just so happens that Pim leaves his mother to live with other relatives and be closer with Gino and his ultimate goal is to try and make their star-crossed relationship work in the long run.Coming-out cinema is beginning to grind not only its own gears together, making for many awkward, too little too late films, but my own personal ones too.
Just having gay characters and a gay love story doesn't make a film edgy, exciting, or visceral on its own merits.
All we're given is a very fragile, loose gay relationship between two young boys, and because of the lack of development we haven't become invested enough to truly care or even worried that something may not work out.But it appears I'm being too hard on a film, whose good intentions are noticeable and somewhat credible.
Jelle Florizoone is a fine, subtle screen presence, excelling at a role that is certainly brave for his age, and likewise for Mathias Vergels, whose older character has even a little more to thing about than his lover.
Quite possibly the most electric scenes in North Sea Texas are when Pim and Gino are confronting their repressed sexual tendencies in a tent in the woods, which involve many intimate sequences and alive emotion.
These scenes alone make the film hard to dislike in many ways.Yet the problems in North Sea Texas are a bit too big to ignore.
There's careful directing, beautiful cinematography (if we're comparing it to other works of queer cinema, it's about half as good as the kind we see in Ang Lee's Brokeback Mountain), and bold performances, but there's also methodical writing, too many characters, slow progression, and an achingly minimalist style present.
All I can hope is that one day, the youth of France get a gay movie that could very well represent their culture in a more intricate, sophisticated way.Starring: Jelle Florizoone, Mathias Vergels, Eva van der Gucht, Katelijne Damen, and Noor Ben Taouet.
what a beautiful , touching gay love story.
i can say that i've cried about 3 times while watching this specially at the end , which is satisfying compared with other German gay movies i have seen such as : summer storm , land of storms , free fall , sasha , beach rats ....
The main character, a teenage boy Pim, lives with his single mother and older brother by the sea.
Pim is a person a few words, as are several of the film's characters.
I enjoyed watching the new and budding relationship between Pim and the neighbor boy, which they are of course compelled to keep hidden.
It is clear that the director is just accumulating things for Pim to put in his collection box, but with little reason to do so except fulfill a director's plot device at the end of a movie.
The beginning has lots of quick cuts, that end abruptly & leave things unexplained, then the film ends with longer shots in which very little happens.
Pim's love interest runs off with a girl, and then all of sudden he comes back....no explanation, no development of the characters means the viewer has no explanation for why things happen except that it's just a series of random events a director tried to string together.
From Belgium comes this coming of age film which is not about Texas.
It also has some loose laws regarding the age of consent because there's no way a film like this would be made in the USA with such young participants in even tastefully done sex scenes.The two main participants are played by young actors different at different ages.
Young Pim who is the only child of the town tramp starts having is gay feelings awakened by a slightly older neighbor boy Gino.
Gino's sister likes Pim, but he can't see her at all.How does it all come out?
When you do you will a nice coming of age film for gay youth that would be banned in Dixie..
Noordzee, Texas includes multiple topics uncommon in most films: gay coming of age, life in the middle of nowhere governed by winds, dunes and tides, irresponsible way of living in a closed community, for example.
Performances are good, realistic (particularly Jelle Florizoone as Pim, Eva Van Der Gucht (as Yvette, Nina Marie Kortekaas as Sabrina), but due to the complexity and versatility of elements, the plot is not seamless, the balance between slow and fast scenes is odd sometimes.
As the film plays at the sea side, it makes the accent even more unrealistic.The movie is based on a novel and it feels like the dialogs have been taken literally which doesn't take into account how much more tolerant written language is compared to spoken.Further, it feels like the scenes chosen drop a bit out of context, with little introduction as to why the characters feel towards one another like they do.All in all, I found it mechanical and I didn't manage to feel with the characters..
This is the story of Pim, a quiet, reserved gay Belgian boy, from the age of about ten (my guess, although he may be as young as seven or eight) to 17.
It is a very well made and well acted movie that really must be seen to be appreciated, but since this seems to be the first review, I'll give it a shot.Pim lives with his bawdy, busty, blonde, unmarried mother Yvette near the North Sea and the French border.
As a result of her haphazard parenting, Pim spends considerable time on his own, often sitting quietly at a table by himself in a seaside roadhouse named Texas (which gives the movie its title) while Yvette plays and parties with her friends.
They are tender yet passionate and very, very beautiful; and I never once thought, "I've seen this before." In fact, I never thought that at any point in the movie; it was as if I were watching a movie about gay teenage love for the first time.Gino is the one who has trouble coming out, and eventually he moves to Dunkirk to live with a French girl.
(Except when the actor playing Pim changes, the passage of time is not clear in this movie; and when Pim and Gino next meet, the only way we know it's two years later is that Gino mentions that Pim will be 17 soon.) Pim is devastated that Gino has abandoned him with no warning.
The entry of a young Gypsy named Zoltan distracts Pim from his grief momentarily, until it becomes obvious Zoltan prefers Yvette.I'm making this wonderful movie sound trite and dull, so I'm going to quit trying to tell what it's about.
But I will limit my praise to the actor who plays the older (14-17-year-old) Pim and the director who encouraged him to give such a strong, courageous, subtle but stunning performance.I believe the actor (whose name is Jelle Florizoone) was around 15 when the movie was made, and although he had worked on TV a little, this seems to be his first movie.
It would be a beautiful performance from any actor at any age, but the fact that he's 15 years old (when even great child actors start to falter) makes it even more impressive.I've learned not to predict future stardom for young actors who give extraordinarily powerful performances in gay movies, because it never happens.
A wonderful film about growing up gay and straight: discovering who you are, what love might mean, and learning to deal through trial and error with the world around you.Set in a lower class neighborhood near the Belgian coast sometime around 1960, the story follows a boy, Pim, and two slightly older neighbor children Gino and Sabrina, from about the age of six or eight until their late teens.Neglected by a mother who dreams of being swept off to romantic places, the younger boy is more or less adopted by the mother of the two neighbor children.
The performances of Ben Van den Heuvel and Jelle Florizoone (PIm); Nathan Naenen and Mathias Vergels (Gino); Noor Ben Tahouet, and Nina Marie Koortekaas (Sabrina) as the young / teen aged children are incredible, especially given the age of the actors.
A beautiful coming of age film.
What beautiful film about love in all its forms.
At one point she is going out and for dinner she just tells him to open a can of sardines.He becomes infatuated with the handsome slightly older boy next door and at one point even jumps at the opportunity to move in with his family when his mother runs off with a new man leaving him behind only to find out that the boy he loves has grown up and also moved out of town.It does tend to be slow but I thought the slow build up just adds to the story.
Pim, Gino, and Sabrina, are entering a period of sexual awakening and the movie is very much about finding love, first love, and heartbreaks.
Pim cannot seem to catch a break in this film, when he's starting to get over Gino, here comes another heartbreak.
There're subtle changes throughout the movie showcasing that change is part of life, something that we have to deal with.North Sea, Texas has beautiful photography, great visuals and score that add an eerie feel to the movie.
I also didn't understand the whole alphabet reciting thing but it sure added to his creepiness.Finally, for a film set in the 1970s with gay characters, it was refreshing to see that the whole shame, self-loathing and guilt of being gay was dismissed for a coming of age story.
Treating Gino and Pim's story as the most natural thing.If you haven't seen the movie please watch it and if you want to talk about it tweet me @wornoutspines..
...partial spoiler about general themes.You've heard this film is about a gay boy named Pim. That label is cargo in our societal theories of life.
So that moral tone does not mislead a person who watches this film to understand themselves.What Pim, like many young persons, does not yet know is, how to grow relationships which really blossom into a friendship that lasts.
I loved the fact that Pim could walk into the house of his neighbours and be like one of the family; it was even more emotional when he was crying when his mother left and also when his 'surrogate' mother got ill and died, I felt the symbolism of all the teenagers' white shirts was very powerful and her gesture with the boys' hands made it a beautiful scene.