Patrick

Released 2019. Director: Tim Mielants

NESTLED AMONG TALL TREES IN A SECLUDED Belgian woodland is a nudist colony where every summer, regulars return to their favourite cabins to spend an idyllic season. This is a small community where everyone knows everyone else and outsiders are not usually welcome with open arms.

Lording over this possessive lot is Rudy, irritable owner and tight-fisted manager who unexpectedly falls off the perch and so his adult son Patrick inherits the campsite. Working as the handyman, Patrick is adept at maintenance but absolutely useless in running a business. A 38-year-old man still living with his parents, Patrick is an extreme introvert with stunted emotional growth who avoids eye contact. But the milquetoast is dutiful, responsible and reliable. Everyone likes him, not least because the man-child is so malleable he’s easily taken advantage of.

Patrick deals with the sudden death of his father the same way he deals with life: bottled up, semi-processed and just muddling along. One incident, however, shakes his world like nothing ever had. Patrick has lost his favourite hammer.

In his spare time Patrick is an expert carpenter and furniture maker sculpting and chiselling designer chairs. Losing this precious hammer is a big deal. On a wall in his work shed lined with tools of various sizes there is now a blank space the shape of a hammer.

Patrick goes round asking if any guest has seen or used his hammer. He embarks on a methodical search and traces the whereabouts diligently like a detective following every lead but the trail comes to a dead end.

Why is the hammer so important to him? More than just a mere tool, it’s a symbol of his self. Patrick’s sense of usefulness, creativity and identity are nested in this one hammer which is irreplaceable. The shape of the hammer is thus like the letter “t” in his name. When it goes missing, Patrick is incomplete and nothing quite fits anymore. The melancholy he feels for his missing hammer is a metaphor for the unexpressed grief over his father's death. The transference of deep emotions onto an inanimate object underscores the man's inability to express his feelings.

Meanwhile, the colony is facing a rising tide of mutiny. Some of the vocal regulars try to garner support to buy out Patrick so they can take over as owners. Patrick’s blind mother has no interest in the business and moves out to live with her sister. For the first time in his life, Patrick is left to take full control.

Following his own sleuthing, Patrick homes in on his prime suspect, leading to a clumsy physical altercation with an enraged camper that tips an entire cabin on its side. Still, Patrick doesn’t have his answer, or his hammer. The police, however, manage to find the hammer at a crime scene and in so doing implicates Patrick as a murder suspect.

Throughout his ordeal there’s only really one person who offers Patrick sympathy and a shoulder. Nathalie (Hannah Hoekstra) is the girlfriend of the colony’s newest visitor, an arrogant rock star named Dustin, played by New Zealand actor Jemaine Clement. Feeling like an outsider and disheartened at Dustin’s attitude towards their relationship, Nathalie shares an understanding with Patrick, both of them on the receiving end of manipulative and transactional friendships.

The script by Tim Mielants and Bejamin Sprengersis is discerning enough not to turn this into a romance of convenience as it’d never have worked. From a simple plot, they manage to make the movie go some distance. It's only when the droll focus shifts from character eccentricity to make room for the murder case that the movie stumbles and the final moments feel rushed in absolving a man falsely accused. The protagonist’s rebirth after the most unsettling time in his life deserves more consideration than a pat ending.

As a mystery set among people with little to no clothing, Patrick the movie is offbeat and deadpan with a character so single-minded in his simple quests you want him to succeed against the odds. In the lead role, Kevin Janssens balances the naivety and dourness of his character with rare suggestions of temper as well as tenderness. This is a story about loss – the missing hammer drives the narrative, after all – specifically a man’s loss of innocence, youth, trust, order; and what he finds within himself. In its occasionally absurdist manner, this comedy-drama is an unlikely coming-of-age story that shows you can still learn something new about people even after you think you’ve, ahem, seen it all.

Warning: Video contains nudity.

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