ninoguapo Review of For a Lost Soldier

For a Lost Soldier (1992)

Friendship and love - of a boy and his hero

[10/10 · 16 December 2005]

I have to admit that I haven't read the book and after reading comments about it – I am not sure that I will read it at all. The movie however is superb. I have watched it several times by now – with friends of mine and alone. The main character is a young Dutch boy - Jeroen, played by Maarten Smit . He falls in love with Canadian soldier during the time he spends away from Amsterdam in a small village. He is send there by his mother, in order to avoid the starvation in the big Dutch cities during the world war when the food there was never enough.

While watching this movie – you will have to decide for yourself if the relationship presented in the movie is acceptable to you or not. The theme song stuck in my mind – as well as and one of my favorite scenes in which Jeroen and Walt run in the field in a very unique way. To me this movie is mainly about friendship, then love – the relationship with Walt made the boy happy, just look the way he smiles when they have their picture taken in one of the scenes. At the same time the ending leaves some questions unanswered- both to the boys and to me as a viewer – was the Canadian soldier just taking an advantage of the boy? And if that is the case I will be disgusted from him. But what if he really loved – but then why he left him? As the movie focuses on the memories of Jeroen , we see that even as an adult he hasn't forget his hero- so there was love and one can only hope this feeling was shared by both main characters.