The premise ofNicole Kidman’s latest film,Holland, an original for Prime Video, is a familiar one:A suburban housewife becomes disillusioned with her seemingly perfect lifewhen she suspects her husband is cheating on her. The script, written byAndrew Sodorski, has been floating around Hollywood for over a decade now, landing on the2013 Black Listbefore ultimately being picked up by Kidman’s production company Blossom Films, withFreshdirectorMimi Cavesigning on to direct in 2023. Kidman, who also serves as a producer, stars as Nancy, a part-time home economics teacher, devoted mother, and wife of Fred (Matthew Macfadyen), the town optometrist. Set in the real, Dutch-themed city of Holland, Michigan, Nancy’s life is turned upside-down when she sets out to investigate Fred’s possible infidelity,uncovering a much darker and deadlier secretwith the help of her colleague and secret lover Dave (Gael García Bernal). But, in Nancy’s words, was any of it real?
Nancy Discovers the Truth About Her Husband Is Much Darker Than She Imagined
Set in the year 2000, Nancy’s idyllic Midwestern suburban life is not all it’s cracked up to be. From the very beginning, when Nancy baselessly accuses her son’s babysitter, Candy (Rachel Sennott), of stealing one of her earrings, we get the sense that Nancy looks for excitement wherever she can get it. So, when Fred’s frequent business trips start to arouse her suspicions that he may be having an affair, she jumps headfirst into investigating his activity. As she obsesses over Fred’s potential infidelity, Nancy recruits Dave, her colleague at the local high school, to help her uncover the truth.While investigating Fred, Nancy starts an affair of her own with Dave, who soon falls for Nancy. He offers to follow Fred on one of his business trips to obtain photographic proof of his infidelity so that the two of them can be together without fear that Nancy will lose custody of her son, Harry (Jude Hill).
While Dave stalks Fred, he follows him to a cabin wherehe discovers that Fred isn’t a cheater, but a murderer, walking in on Fred slicing a woman’s throat. Fred then attacks him, chasing him to a nearby lake, and in their scuffle, Fred is impaled by his own knife and ultimately collapses into the water. Meanwhile, Nancy returns to Holland and looks into the identity of the “Bologna Queen” who she believes Fred to be having an affair with, only to find out she disappeared a few years prior and was later found murdered. After some investigating in their garage and the local library, Nancy begins to suspecther husbandmay be a serial killer, with each of his victims corresponding to a different miniature house he built for his model train-set village.Once Dave drives back to Holland after leaving Fred for dead in the water, he confirms Nancy’s suspicions and tells her that he confronted Fred with their evidence and told him to disappear.
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Somehow, Fredmanages to surviveand returns to Holland just in time to watch Harry dance in the Tulip Time festival, to Nancy’s horror. After spotting him in the crowd, she takes Harry to a nearby motel for his safety, and Dave follows, insisting they come clean and call the police so they can put Fred in jail and they can finally be together. When he tries to grab the phone from her,Dave accidentally falls backward, hitting his head on the television, and starts to bleed. As Nancy goes to find help, she realizes Fred has tracked them down, manipulating Harry into believing everything is fine. Reminding Nancy of the life he’s provided for her and insisting that his serial killing ways are not “the real him,” Fred forces her back into the car, but, unbeknownst to him, Nancy is armed with Dave’s small gun.She shoots Fred in the side of the head and ends up beating him to death with Harry’s wooden clog,but when she returns to the hotel to find Dave, he hasmysteriously disappeared.
Director Mimi Cave Wants ‘Holland’s Ending to Be Left up to Interpretation
After taking us on a twisty murder mystery,Hollandleaves us questioning whether the events we just watched really took place at all. The film opens with Nancy’s narration, reflecting on her perfect life and how it oftenfeels like a dream. Her narration doesn’t return until the very end when she’s joined by Dave, and the film fades to black as they say in unison,“Sometimes I wonder, was it even real?”Unfortunately, there’s no straight answer as to whether the events ofHollandwere real or concocted by Nancy herself in order to bring her boring life some excitement, and itsvarious plotholesprevent us from knowing for sure.Director Mimi Cave prefers to leave the ending of the film open to interpretation.In an interview withUSA Today, Cave confirms that Fred is in fact dead, framing it as both a literal and symbolic victory for her character, getting her and Harry to safety and taking back her agency.
In the same interview, Cave offers an alternative to the most straightforward reading of the film, suggesting that Dave could have been a figment of Nancy’s imagination. This is contradicted by scenes where Dave appears and interacts with other characters when Nancy isn’t present but lends credence to the theory that the entire film was a story Nancy came up with to entertain herself,fantasizing about an affair and a juicymurder mysteryto give her life some excitement.It would certainly make some of the more outlandish plot points, like Fred seemingly coming back from the dead and Dave’s disappearance at the end of the film, make more sense. So,wasit even real? That’s for you to decide.
Hollandis available to stream on Prime Video.
In the upcoming thrillerHolland, Nicole Kidman portrays Nancy Vandergroot, a meticulous teacher and homemaker in Holland, Michigan. Her seemingly perfect life with husband Fred (Matthew Macfadyen) and son Harry (Jude Hill) unravels when she and colleague Dave Delgado (Gael García Bernal) uncover a disturbing secret.
