‘Narcosis’ Review: Oscar Submission From The Netherlands
For quite a few years, a belief held sway that bereavement consisted of a series of five – or was it seven? – stages, starting with shock and moving through to acceptance, after which you were more or less home free. Of course, no human emotion runs so smoothly, grief least of all. The various members of the family in Martijn de Jong’s Narcosis feel anger, anguish and denial by turns and sometimes simultaneously, each of them cocooned in their own sac of misery, unable to say what they feel, even to themselves. Grief here is as messy and resistant to resolution as it is in real life.