Q:Build a movie plot around this: Where were the students when the English radio broadcast interrupted them? Tennis match
A:
The film is about a group of students from Leiden, the Netherlands, amongst them Erik Lanshof (Rutger Hauer), Guus LeJeune (Jeroen Krabbe), Jan Weinberg (Huib Rooymans), and Alex (Derek de Lint). Robby Froost (Eddy Habbema) is a friend of Erik's, and Esther (Belinda Meuldijk) is Robby's girlfriend. Each of them happens to follow a different path and therefore has a different role in the Second World War, either as a collaborator or in the resistance. Part of the story is set in London, where Queen Wilhelmina (Andrea Domburg) has her residence. The students Erik and Guus fight alongside Colonel Rafelli (Edward Fox) and soldier Susan (Susan Penhaligon) of the allied forces in London.The film begins with a flashforward in the form of a newsreel with a voice-over. Queen Wilhelmina is accompanied by Erik arriving in the Netherlands from London shortly after the Second World War. After the newsreel the film starts in the late 1930s in Leiden, where freshmen undergo the humiliation of the initiation rites of their fraternity. Erik is picked out by Guus, the chair of the fraternity, who throws a bowl of soup over his head and injures him with the bowl. After this accident the two become close friends and Guus offers him a room in his private student apartment in the center of Leiden. In this house the students (Erik, Guus, Jan, and Alex) have a drink which confirms their new friendships.An English radio broadcasting interrupts the students in a tennis match and announces the declaration of war by the United Kingdom against Germany. In the beginning the students seem to take things lightly, the Netherlands will probably be neutral again, like in World War I. Jan and also Alex, who has a German mother, immediately join the Dutch army. Then German bombs start to fall, and Erik and Guus try to join the army but they are not accepted by a traumatized army officer. Shortly thereafter the Netherlands capitulates. Erik has an affair with Esther.Robby has a radio transmitter in his garden shed from where he contacts the Dutch...