“Holland” is set circa 2000 in Holland, Mich., a real town founded by Dutch settlers and distinguished by its windmill, tulips and other tributes to the Netherlands. Red herring is also on the menu in this second feature from the director Mimi Cave. The film’s unusual backdrop, unresolved subplots and dream-sequence fakeouts are ultimately all distractions from a story that doesn’t make much sense.
Cave’s dating thriller “Fresh” (2022), starring Daisy Edgar-Jones and Sebastian Stan, was also not a model of narrative logic. This time, there are signs that connective tissue may have gotten lost in the editing. (Rachel Sennott, from “Bottoms,” appears for what barely qualifies as a cameo.) Yet there is just enough effort to tie up loose ends that “Holland” can’t be hand-waved as accidental avant-garde.
Nancy (Nicole Kidman), a home economics teacher, suspects that her husband, Fred (Matthew Macfadyen), an optometrist, is having an affair because he so often goes on business trips. She persuades Dave (Gael García Bernal), who teaches shop and harbors a reciprocated crush on Nancy, to help investigate. (Dave’s life before his move to Holland is one of many matters that Cave and the screenwriter, Andrew Sodroski, tip as important and then mostly ignore.)
It is hard to catalog the plot holes without giving too much away, but between the gluteal surgery in “Fresh” and a stabbing here, Cave is apparently not a stickler for continuity when it comes to injuries. A framing device suggesting that some events might be imagined acts as little more than a shoddy excuse.
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